


Keep Your Heart, My Lovely

by atreacherousoldwitch



Series: Won't you please come get your baby? [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cannon Pairings - Freeform, Deatheaters, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Grimmauld Place, Growing Up, Guilt, Happy Ending, Harry Potter Epilogue Compliant, Harry swears a bit, Hurt/Comfort, Quidditch World Cup Final, QuidditchPlayer!Ginny, Siblings, a bit more grown up, auror!Harry, description of depression a little not in detail, description of injury but not graphic, everyone is sad for a bit, harry potter is a good dad, instances of bad language but not many, its even more difficult being twelve, not explicit but adult themes implied a little bit, only in relation to Harry and Ginny, threat, tween angst, tween girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25264267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreacherousoldwitch/pseuds/atreacherousoldwitch
Summary: A targeted attack on the Potters by rogue death eater sympathisers throws Lily-Lu’s summer into turmoil.The guilt of not seeing the attack starts eat at her, so Lily-Lu dedicates herself to pursuing her unique talent. Things get worse before they get better, mistakes are made, and Lily-Lu learns that sometimes you don’t need magic to save the day.Or: when Harry’s kids are attacked, he finds the world he’s built for them threatened. Forced to deal with unwelcome memories, Harry risks not seeing what’s right in front of him.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Series: Won't you please come get your baby? [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722256
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> A/N - Another instalment in this verse! I’ve tried (and am still trying) to write a companion piece to ‘Won’t you please come get your baby’ where we get to see what happened with Ginny and Harry during that time - but it’s not coming easily. In the meantime, I though we’d move the story forward a bit. This takes place the summer between Lily-Lu’s first and second year at school. I’ve tried to move away from Lily-Lu as the sole narrator, because it made sense to expand the perspective, so hopefully this works.
> 
> This pretty much stands alone, but there are a couple of references to the first instalment so it might be worth reading that one first if you haven't already. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

————

‘Can you look at my bike Jim?’ Lily-Lu asks over breakfast, as she helps herself to more bacon. ‘I think the chain is hooked in wrong, and it won’t change gear properly anymore.’

‘Sure’ James says, around a mouthful of egg.

‘Will you look at it today? After breakfast?’ she presses, and James huffs.

‘Yes, alright. I’ll look at it after breakfast.’

Lily-Lu grins satisfied, and shovels her breakfast into her mouth. Ginny eyes Lily-Lu from over her mug of coffee.

‘I’ve got training today-‘ Ginny starts, but she’s interrupted.

‘Yes I know’ James says, ‘and Al is going to see Rose, and Dad’s working but he’ll be home later, so me and Lulu have to fend for ourselves. If I can get her bike working we can go for a cycle or something.’

Albus smirks.

Ginny doesn’t.

‘That’s right smart aleck, but I was going to say if you and Lulu want to go to Nanna’s you can. She’ll probably feed you better than dad will later.’

Lily-Lu fingers the polka dots on the table cloth. Its a hard decision, but -

‘Nah, we’ll stay’ James says quickly, and the look he shoots Lily-Lu says she’d better agree or else.

‘Yeah we’ll stay. We can go for a cycle.’ Lily-Lu agrees. She can work with this.

Ginny twists her mouth, and narrows her eyes, but ultimately there’s not much she can say. ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ she says eventually and drains the mug. ‘I’m off, if you’re all ok? Al, Ron said to use the floo as soon as you’re ready.’

They all nod, various levels of enthusiasm. Ginny tidies away the breakfast plates and puts on her trainers. She eyes them one more time, before kissing them all, leaving them wiping away sticky lipgloss from their cheeks (and why does she put on lipgloss for training? She’s just going to sweat it off?) and she jogs out the door and up the street to apparition point.

Albus disappears twenty minutes later off to Rose’s, and if he takes a bunch of Weasley Wizard Wheezes prototype products with him, neither of them are going to snitch on him.

It leaves James and Lily-Lu home alone. James sighs. Lily-Lu grins.

————

They do manage to get the bike fixed.

Away from watching eyes, and judgemental cousins, James is a good brother, and they get on well. Whilst he puts on a good front for others, playing up the usual sibling irritation, they are very alike.

————

They go for a bike ride.

Lily-Lu loves her bike. It’s turquoise with silver sparkle flames. It’s a proper mountain bike. Not a little girls’ bike with a basket, it’s a proper racing bike with seven gears.

They ride away from the house for a couple of miles, heading right into the countryside. They race down dirt tracks and loop around the small pond. The take a break under the big oak tree and James has a snooze, and Lily-Lu wastes away an hour by taking her trainers off and paddling in the stream. She sees tiny little fish, and finds two newts and a salamander.

It’s nearly three o’clock when they decide to head back to the house, all sore muscles and sunburnt shoulders.

It’s been a pretty perfect day.

————

And that’s where it all goes wrong.

They’re coasting down a dip in the road, only a mile or so from the main road that’ll take them home. James is in front, with Lily-Lu following when he breaks suddenly. He stops, jolting forward, and Lily-Lu crashes into the back of him. She breaks, but can’t stop in time, so she topples over, tumbling into the dirt, scraping her knees and palms.

‘James!’ she cries.

But he doesn’t turn or say anything. He’s got his wand in his hand, and he steps out to the side, in front of her, dropping his bike and it clatters to the floor. Lily-Lu jumps to her feet, her heart pounding in her chest. There are two people at the bottom of the road, and as she peeks around James she can see that they are wearing long black robes, and silver expressionless masks. A noise comes from behind her, and as she spins she finds one more person stood behind them, dressed the same.

‘Leave us alone.’ James shouts, ‘get out of the way,’ and it’s clear that he knows it's a long shot, but his voice is steady and, when he holds out his wand, so is his hand.

The three draw their wands. Lily-Lu fumbles hers. She can’t quite pull it out from where she’d hastily shoved it down the back of her dungarees earlier, and then it doesn’t matter because it’s too late.

James pushes her sideways into the hedge and she squeaks, as two spells come flying towards them. James repels them well, and strikes back, but he doesn’t see or didn’t know about the third person behind them and the next moment his wand is flying out of his hand and another strike has him dropping to the ground with a groan.

‘James Potter’ one of the figures says, a woman, ‘Well, well, well.’

And that’s too much for Lily-Lu. She doesn’t quite know what she’s going to do but she can feel her magic pooling inside her, it flickers on her skin like static, and she jumps up out of the hedge into the middle of the road.

‘You’re going to come with us,’ the woman drawls, and turns her wand on Lily-Lu, but then the magic Lily-Lu can feel in her bones snaps.

‘No!’ Lily-Lu shrieks, and she throws out her hand in front of her, palm facing outwards, fingers outstretched, and the three figures are thrown back violently. The ground around her cracks, the hedges are unrooted, and the three figures are sent sprawling on the floor several metres further away.

James pulls himself to his feet, almost at the same time as the figures do, and just as they reach for their wands again, James’ hands grasp around her wrists.

His face is terrible. He’s pale under his tanned skin, mouth pinched with pain and eyes screwed tight. ‘Hold on’ he mutters, and then the world around them disappears.

————

It feels like being sucked into a tube. She’s suddenly breathless, gasping, and her head throbs and every muscle, every cell in her body aches, and _oh my god._

And then it’s over, and James and Lily-Lu fall out of thin air outside the Burrow.

For a second she thinks everything’s ok, aside from their heaving chests. They’re outside the Burrow, and she can hear all the noises she associates with it: the banging of kitchen pans, the singing of birds, wind in the grass and it’s ok.

And then it’s not.

James makes a sound, she can’t quite describe it. A cross between a gasp and a wheeze, and he’s pressed his left arm tight to his side, but it’s not enough to hide the quick spread of scarlet blood across his t-shirt.

Lily-Lu screams.

She turns to the house as James hits the ground with a dull thud and she runs; runs towards the back door and she screams and screams and screams.

The door flies open, and Uncle Bill is running towards her, arms outstretched and eyes wide, but she shakes her head and she’s lost all ability to speak, all she can do is scream and point at her brother lying in the dirt.

Uncle Ron appears from Grampy’s shed, and next thing she knows they’re running to James. They’re kneeling down and shouting, and Nanna appears white faced and she hushes Lily-Lu, shushes her firmly and says, ‘tell me what happened.’

She manages to explain, gives the basics of ‘attacked’ and ‘disapparated’, when the men heave James inside, and Nanna ushers them in. Then Ron and Bill disappear through the fireplace with James, shouting St Mungo’s over their shoulders, and Nanna and Grampy are out the front, wands aloft casting warding spells.

And all Lily-Lu can do is sit on the kitchen floor and cry.

————

It’s Hermione who brings the news to Harry.

She turns up at the office out of breath. She’s unprepared, that much is clear, in her pyjama bottoms and a tank top that clings to her tightly, making Harry wonder if Ginny’s wiggling eyebrows of the other night were more accurate than he’d initially thought.

She finds him in his office, and she shuts the door and Harry gets to his feet to meet her.

‘Hermione-‘ he starts, adrenaline flooding through him, prickling the back of his neck and sliding down his spine.

She reaches out to him, takes his hand and puts her free one on his chest.

‘Don’t panic,’ she says firmly, quiet and unambiguous. Harry’s heart jumps. _This is bad,_ he thinks, _this is going to be really bad._

‘Don’t panic, ok? James has been rushed to hospital. He and Lulu were out cyclng, and they were attacked. He apparated to the Burrow, but it looks like he’s splinched himself badly. Ron and Bill have taken him to St Mungo’s. Ron’s gone to get Ginny from training. Lulu’s at the Burrow. Al is at mine with my kids. I only left them for a second, I’ve warded the whole house, and I’ll go back there now. We’ll take them to the Burrow later.’

He knows why they’ve sent Hermione to him, and Ron to Ginny. Ron won’t be able to give so much bad news so succinctly, and Ginny won’t need to hear it. Hermione tells Harry everything he needs to know in less than a minute, emotions be damned.

She squeezes his hand. ‘Bill’s with Jim at the hospital.’

‘I need to go,’ Harry manages, and Hermione nods.

‘Go. I’ll deal with them here, and then go back to mine. I’ll see you later,’ and she doesn’t reach for him or kiss him, just lets him go. He runs to the floo, and disappears.

————

St Mungo’s is a hell all of its own. As soon as he appears in the huge lobby Harry can feel his stress levels rise, and his blood pressure peak. He jogs over to the emergency section, peers down into the diagnostic cubicles, but can’t see anyone he recognises. He takes a second to decide if he’s going to pull rank, and then thinks yes, he absolutely is.

It only takes a moment for him to skip the queue, flash his auror’s pass and introduce himself as Harry Potter. The receptionist scowls at him, but lets it slide. She directs him to the fourth floor, Janus Thickey Ward, (spell damage), and when he hurries out of the lift it’s to see Fleur sat in the waiting room.

She rises to her feet, and smiles gently.

‘It’s ok,’ she says. ‘They’re optimistic, he’s in room four. Bill’s with him.’

‘Thank you,’ Harry mutters, and he means it.

‘He was asking for you.’ Fleur says and that hits Harry right in the chest and he has to swallow a lump in his throat.

————

Room four is full of people. Healers rushing around, and shouting diagnostics, but Bill is crouched over the head of the bed, and he’s holding James’ hand.

He looks up as Harry approaches, and his face is grim. Bill holds out his hand with James’ clasped in it and Harry takes it.

He looks down at his son.

_God it hurts._

James is pale and sweating. They’ve stripped off his top and bottoms so he’s almost entirely bare, and the whole of his left side from his armpit to his thigh is scraped raw, swollen, red and bloody. The healers are dabbing at it gingerly, and it takes Harry only a second to know that this is not a simple splinching.

Hannah Abbott catches Harry’s eye, and puts her hand on his shoulder as she passes. ‘Let us work’ she whispers to him, ‘let us run the diagnostics and then we’ll be able to tell you more. Talk to him, get him to talk to you if you can. We want him conscious.’

Harry nods. James is gasping for breath, deep heaves and it sounds like it hurts. Harry takes the seat that Bill had been using and sits at the head of the bed.

‘Hey’ he says softly, and James turns his head, ‘hey, it’s ok, you’re ok buddy’ he coos gently and James opens his eyes and clutches Harry’s hand tightly.

‘Dad’ he wheezes, ‘Dad, Lulu-‘

‘Lulu’s fine.’ He keeps his voice pitched low and even. Reassuring. ‘She’s at the Burrow with Nanna and Grampy. She’s ok. It’s you we’re worried about.’

‘Lulu’

‘She’s ok, she’s fine.’

‘Dad’ and James is crying, so Harry wipes away the tears, gentle strokes along his cheek. ‘Dad I lost my wand,’ he gasps. ‘I lost my wand, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I lost my-‘

‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Forget about it, a wand is nothing. We can get you another one. Don’t worry.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s ok. It’s ok.’ He keeps up the stream of meaningless comfort as the healers flit around, and eventually they press cool blue gel on white bandages to the wound, and James flinches but some of the strain around his eyes eases, and he looks up at Harry easier.

‘Dad?’

‘Yeah?’

But there’s no follow through, just James nodding to himself, and Harry strokes his hand over James’ head, petting his hair softly.

‘Yeah, I’m here. I’m here Jim, don’t worry. You’re ok. It’s ok.’

————

Ginny arrives forty minutes later, in muddy training gear, absolutely fuming.

She tells him in whispers over James’ head, how security at the stadium had refused to let Ron in, and insisted he had to wait until a proper break in training. After fifteen minutes Ron had lost his temper, and started to throw his weight - and punches - around. The resulting scuffle had lasted another ten minutes, until Ginny had gone to have a nose, and found out what had happened. She got here as quick as she could.

Although the sight of Ginny’s fear and worry hurts, he’s glad for her. They’ll tackle this as team, and when the healers ask for a word it’s Ginny’s game face that gives him the strength to leave James dozing and follow them into the other room.

————

Hannah sits them down, and when Ginny reaches for his hand her palm is cool and clammy.

‘We’re fairly certain that whilst James has experienced some splinching, the bulk of the injury is from spell damage.’

Harry nods. He’d figured that out already.

‘There is some splinching on his hands, and on his belly, but we’ve healed that and we’re not worried. As you know the risk of splinching is increased exponentially if apparating without a wand, and my understanding is that he had someone side along as well. He’s very lucky it’s not worse.’

Hannah takes a sip of water.

‘That’s the good news, I’m afraid.’ Ginny squeezes his hand tightly, her nails send pinpricks of pain up his arm. He squeezes back.

‘As you’ve both seen, the damage to his left side is fairly extensive. The good news, is that his organs are largely unaffected, the essential ones are fine. We’re worried about left kidney and his liver, but those can be dealt with. The wound itself is the product of a nasty curse, and unfortunately at this point we don’t which one.’

It’s what he expected her to say, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Ginny is scowling, harsh and angry.

‘The damage is contained, and we’ve sent samples down to research. As soon as we know what’s going on we can start to heal this. But it’s not going to be tomorrow. This could take a while.’

She pauses, and adopts that neutral expression of people in her area of work, allowing them time to process.

Ginny sighs, and he puts his arm around her.

‘It’s ok,’ he whispers, ‘he’s alive and he’s with it. Anything else we can deal with.’

Hannah nods, ‘exactly that’ she says, ‘his long term prospects are extremely good, and we expect him to make a full recovery. It’s just the next few weeks that are likely to be trying.’

Ginny rests her head on his shoulder. 

————

It feels like she’s been crying forever, but Lily-Lu can’t stop.

She’s managed to get the screaming and sobbing under control, and she’s retreated to the corner of the sofa where she can sit and watch and not be in anyone’s way, but she can’t stop weeping. It’s like there’s a tap behind her eyes, and she’s just leaking constantly.

It takes hours to ward the house, Molly and Arthur do the first round, and then Bill comes back and adds more, and so does Ron. Lily-Lu wonders if they mean to let anyone in ever again.

By the time the house is warded and Hermione arrives, it’s growing dark and Lily-Lu hasn’t eaten since breakfast. She could go into the kitchen and get something, or she could ask Nanna, but she feels sick.

Eventually Arthur remembers her. He’s gentle when he sits with her on the sofa, and he tucks her close and lets her cry.

Albus is wide eyed and worried, and he sits close too.

————

Later she and Albus go to bed. They forgo the usual sleeping arrangement, and claim the double bed in Percy’s old room for them to share. It’s late, and there’s no word from the hospital yet. Albus says no news is good news, but Lily-Lu’s not convinced. They hear Nanna and Grampy go to bed around one in the morning and then there’s nothing. They wait and wait and wait, and eventually they hear someone come back, at quarter to three.

When Ginny sneaks in, wriggles under the duvet and wraps her arms around both of them, they don’t even pretend to be asleep.

‘It’s ok,’ she breathes into the darkness, ‘I’ll tell you in the morning, but it’s ok.’

Lily-Lu closes her eyes.

————

The morning comes and Ginny disappears back to the hospital.

Harry appears for an hour. He kisses them on the cheeks, showers, has a power nap, and then runs out the door to work with Uncle Ron and goes to investigate. He’s abrupt and distracted.

Lily-Lu takes herself back to bed. She sleeps for hours and when she gets up again in the late afternoon her eyes fall on an abandoned tea cup someone’s left on the side. She picks it up and peers at the bottom idly, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head, but she can’t see anything.

She can feel something in the back of her throat and when she swallows it tastes like guilt.

————

The next few days are the worst Harry has known in a long time.

There’s nothing about the lane where James and Lily-Lu were attacked that gives any clues. No evidence, no descriptions - the only knowledge they have is that at least one was female, they knew James by name (but possibly not Lily-Lu?) and the description Lily-Lu gave him is eerily reminiscent of early death eaters. Harry’s seen too much to think this is a coincidence.

Officially, he’s been benched from the investigation, because there’s an obvious conflict of interest. Because Harry’s children may still be at risk, because Harry’s _family_ may be at risk and they’ve no motive so who’s to say that the target isn’t Harry himself?

Unofficially, he’s the head of the department for magical law enforcement, and whilst he’s handed over the official investigation to colleagues he trusts, there’s only so many steps back he can take.

The reports still make it across his desk, the evidence (what little there is of it) is his to observe, and it’s his daughter they interview - so of course he’s going to be present.

Peaks and Proudfoot go to the Burrow to conduct the interview, instead of requiring Lily-Lu to go to the ministry. And as she’s underage she’s allowed a parent present, and it just makes sense for it to be him, although he feels sorry for her, the only girl in a room of three grown men. He’s only a moment away from insisting Molly or Ginny or even Fleur join them to balance it out when Lily-Lu pulls her shoulders back and nods, in a way that makes her look so much like Ginny, and they go ahead.

It’s the first time he’s spent any time with either of his other two kids in almost a week, and he’s surprised that he doesn’t really know what’s going on in her head.

Lily-Lu does excellently, she remembers everything. There are no gaps in her story, no question marks over the tale. No wonders of ‘how did you get there?’ or ‘how did this event follow this one?’ Everything is precise and chronological. Unfortunately it doesn’t give them much to go on.

They go over the story several times, but no one has any reason to think she’s lying or missing anything. Her display of wandless magic makes Peaks raise his eyebrows, but at Harry’s glare he doesn’t labour over the point. It _is_ impressive though, and leads Harry to wonder if he and Ginny need to have another conversation about their talented daughter.

Peaks and Proudfoot take their leave, reminding her that if she remembers anything else to tell her dad, and they go.

Harry lingers, in the warm kitchen, and tugs her close. Lily-Lu goes easily.

They’re generally a physically affectionate family. They share kisses and hugs, give thumps on the shoulder or back. Touches that have always come easily to Ginny, having grown up in an overcrowded over-emotional family, touches that have always come harder to him.

He was never held as a child. Never kissed or cuddled. Touch for him has always been neglectful and harmful. _Painful._ He’s been scared for many years that his inaptitude with general family love would leave his children aloof or distant with him. That Lily-Lu at twelve years old comes to him easily, and settles herself half sat half leaning against him, tucks her arm around his shoulders, and presses her face close eases this worry, for now.

‘You ok?’ He says softly, and she nods, her breath warm on his cheek and she lifts a finger to stroke at his beard.

‘Yeah. I’m ok’ she says with a sigh, ‘How’s Jim?’

‘Better today. He was complaining about the food so that’s a good sign. If he’s ok tomorrow you and Al could go and visit if you want?’

She nods slowly. ‘Do you think he wants to see me though?’

Harry’s surprised.

‘Of course he does.’ He tries to twist around and see her face but she won’t look at him, pressing her face into his shoulder. ‘He always asks about you. He’s been worried about you. Why do you think he wouldn’t want to see you?’

‘I dunno’ she mutters, but he suspects she does.

Harry’s lost a bit, running on only a couple of hours sleep in five days, and he doesn’t quite understand what he’s missed here - some interaction between his children whose sibling relationships give him great pleasure but also confuse him. He doesn’t always understand how one second they can be spitting, biting and pulling hair, and the next they’re best mates.

‘Of course he does. He loves you and he wants to see you. Don’t - don’t think differently.’

She hums. ‘I’d like to see him.’

‘Ok. We’ll see if he’s up for a visit tomorrow then.’

‘Ok.’

‘Ok.’

————

They do go and see James in the end. They have to wait by the Burrow back door, for Ginny and Uncle Bill to manipulate the wards to let them out safely, and then they disapparate.

Lily-Lu doesn’t like St Mungo’s. She’s only been there a handful of times before - to visit Auntie Hermione in hospital when Hugo was born, when James broke his arm. To visit Harry once or twice, when he’d been injured at work. And each time she’s filled with a sense of unease and of worry. This is a place full of sick people. This is a place where people come to die.

Ginny tells her not to think like that. That this is a place where people come to get better, but it’s hard to remember that when she can see people bleeding and crying in the hospital waiting room.

She’s not particularly religious, but she thinks right now it would be nice to be able to pray to someone to keep her brother safe.

Ginny leads them up to the fourth floor (spell damage) and that makes Lily-Lu pause, because she’d thought that James had been splinched. Hadn’t realised it was something more serious, and that makes her heart hurt with worry.

When they turn into the ward, she spots her dad sat at the far end. He’s leaning forward in his chair, talking to James in the bed.

‘Hello my darling’, Ginny says to James when they crowd around the bed. She goes to him with ease, kisses him on the side of the head, and takes a chair. Harry waves Lily-Lu and Albus forward, with a smile that only looks a little bit fake.

‘Lulu!’ James calls, and he holds out his arms for her as best he can. She puts down the bag she’s been carrying, full of requested food apparently, and goes slowly. She perches on the end of the bed, and lets James kiss her cheek. ‘Oh man, I’m so glad to see you, I’ve been really worried.’

And he’s been worried about her? That’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.

‘I’ve been worried about you’ she says, with a forced smile, but it’s worth it when James grins widely.

‘And Al, you’ve come to see me buddy.’

Albus grins, ‘I didn’t have a choice man, I’m being blackmailed to be here,’ but he reaches over and bumps fists with James.

‘You’re not being blackmailed’ Ginny scolds.

‘You told me I’d better come and see Jim or else you’d make me clean out the broom cupboard with a toothbrush. What that’s if not blackmail?’

‘Parenting.’

Harry laughs, ‘I’m going to get a coffee, does anyone want anything.’

They all shake their heads except for James, who says ‘Can I have a beer?’

Harry and Ginny say ‘no’ simultaneously, and James winks at his brother and sister.

He does look better, Lily-Lu thinks, as she watches him closely from her perch on the end of the bed. He can’t sit up properly, and she can see how he favours his right side. How his left arm is tucked closely to his left side, and he’s wrapped up in bandages and she can see all sorts of potions lined up for him on the shelf by the bed.

 _This is awful,_ she thinks. _And it’s my fault._

She watches as Ginny fusses, and Albus and James discuss the Harpies latest quidditch match, and for some reason even surrounded by her family, Lily-Lu feels very small, and very alone.

————

They only stay an hour, and when she kisses James goodbye he looks her closely in the eye, and says ‘I’m glad you’re ok. I’ve been really worried about you,’ and the look he gives her is a bit too shrewd, as if he knows somethings going on, but he lets her go without further comment.

————

The days start to fall into routine.

Albus and Lily-Lu have moved into the Burrow pretty much full time, because the wards are strong and Molly can keep an eye on them.

Harry and Ginny alternate days and nights, staying with James in the day, and spending hours with him in the evening. Harry is working full time, supporting with the investigation into the attack. Lily-Lu doesn’t know where or when he sleeps, or if he’s just running on coffee and adrenaline.

Between her parents’ eyes, and her grandparents’ even shrewder eyes, Lily-Lu finds she has a couple of hours in the afternoon where Molly starts cooking, and Harry’s at work and Ginny’s at the hospital, and Arthur’s in his shed, where no one is keeping an eye on her whereabouts.

And so she starts to plan.

————

It’s both trickier and easier than she imagines to implement her plan.

It’s not difficult to persuade Teddy to go to the library for her, and get her some books on divination and fortune telling. Her interest in these areas is well known by now, and he takes it as a good sign that she’s re-interested in her normal hobbies. He does her a solid, and brings back seven books. The two she asked for, and others that the librarian had recommended.

Going through the books, the indexes, the references, is long and time consuming, but eventually she has a list of seers that have shown actual definitive proof that they could see the future. The list is not as long as she’d hoped, so she also has a back up of several more who have not been proven to be seers, but who also haven’t been proven to be cons. This list is much longer.

She steals (borrows) her grandmother’s wizard and witch directory, and simply looks them up.

She doesn’t know if this is genius, or incredibly dumb.

Lily-Lu is pleasantly surprised to find four of the five seers on her first list, simply listed in the directory.

Lily-Lu sits on this information for a couple of days. She goes to visit James, and she naps in the garden in front of the pond, and Nanna gets them to degnome the garden and she impresses everyone by throwing a gnome the furthest.

When her dad comes home past midnight two weeks after the attack, and looks like he’s about to collapse, Lily-Lu decides that she has a duty and a responsibility to her family to ensure nothing like this happens again - or at least not without their prior knowledge. She peeks through the bannisters on the stairs as her parents hug and kiss, and she thinks that after everything they’ve done for her, this is something she can do for them.

————

She writes to the seers. Explains who she is, and the situation, and asks to meet.

She bribes Hugo and he lets her borrow the owl his parents have recently bought him, prior to his first year at school. She tells him she wants to write to Dacey. It’s only half a lie. She does write to Dacey, but she uses her mum’s owl instead.

————

Only one witch writes back.

————

Her name is Sybill Trelawney. She writes that she has been expecting Lily-Lu’s letter. She says she would love to meet.

————

This next bit is harder.

Lily-Lu knows, through almost three weeks of careful plotting and watching that no-one looks for her between three o’clock until about five-thirty when Nanna serves dinner. She pushes this a couple of times, disappearing about half past two, and only Grampy comments, saying he’d wanted to show her the new muggle invention he’s discovered, but he doesn’t ask where she’s been.

But it’s risky. There’s too many things that could go wrong, and Ginny could come back from the hospital early. Harry could decide to be done with work and come to the Burrow to see them, or to have a nap.

She’s going to need an alibi.

In the end, she bribes Hugo (again) and says that if anyone comes looking for her, ever, he needs to tell them that she’s practicing tea leaf reading in the attic, and is not to be disturbed. She floats this lie a couple of times at dinner herself, to give it legitimacy, and other than a few nods, and impressed hums, no one says anything. She doesn’t have the courage to lie to her dad’s face though, so she lets the news filter to him through Nanna. She crosses her fingers and hopes it’ll be enough.

————

She writes back to Trelawney, and suggests they meet in Exeter, somewhere. The plan is for Lily-Lu to get the fast train to Exeter from Ottery St Catchpole station, it only takes 17 minutes, meet this woman, have a chat, get back on the train and be back by dinner.

It’s risky.

Trelawney writes back, suggests a small cafe on the main high street, not far from the station. It’s a wizard run cafe, so they won’t attract too much attention, but it’s not too close to Ottery St Catchpole that she runs the risk of being caught by someone who knows her. Or someone who will let slip to Molly or Arthur that their granddaughter was spotted wondering around. Thank goodness she doesn’t have the super obvious bright red Weasley hair, and has her dad’s complexion instead of her mums.

She’s aware this may be the stupidest idea she’s every had. This may even top James’ summer beach party saga of two summers ago, and the spiked punch that has been (apparently) Dominique’s fault.

But it’s the only plan she has.

————

At two twenty-three on the Thursday three weeks after the attack, Lily-Lu sneaks upstairs, as is her usual routine, takes the rucksack she’d stashed earlier, with the muggle cash saved from her cinema trip with Dacey at easter, and opens the window.

It doesn’t take too much effort to shimmy down the drainpipe (she’s done this before, they all have) and she clambers onto the roof below, and then down the terracing.

She rolls under the kitchen window, feeling very much like a spy or a ninja, and before she knows it she’s headed down the track away from the Burrow.

She runs, as quickly as she can, trainers slapping the ground and dust and dirt flying up behind her. She turns left on to the high street, and makes it to the end of the road to the train station. Getting the train is easy enough (there’s only two platforms) and then she’s on her way to Exeter.

_This is a bad idea._

Just under twenty minutes later, nearing three o’clock, she gets off the train in Exeter, and follows the directions she’s scribbled on spare parchment, that takes her down a left and a right, and she can feel it in the air when she turns left into the magical area of Exeter. There’s a hum of magic, it feels like Diagon Alley, and suddenly there are witches around her in robes and wizards with long beards.

It’s easy to see which cafe Trelawney meant, it’s the only one in the proximity, and there’s a dingy sign out front that says in faded letters ‘Abigail W’s Cauldron’. The clientele is certainly older, and eccentric, but Lily-Lu figures she’s come this far, she may as well see it through.

Inside is no cleaner, the tables are stained and the waitress looks at her oddly when she comes in. She’s the youngest in here, by probably forty years.

_This is a bad idea._

A woman is sat in the far corner. Her hair is wild, and huge round glasses magnify her eyes so they seem to bug out of her face. She has a massive carpet bag at her feet, and a cat sat on the table in front of her, lapping up milk out of a saucer. She looks like every muggle’s idea of a witch.

‘Ahh’ she says, as Lily-Lu approaches, ‘Miss Potter, have a seat.’

It would be more startling, if Lily-Lu wasn’t so used to spending time with Auntie Luna. In a way, the dreamy disassociated tone is comforting.

‘Ms Trelawney. Thank you so much for meeting me,’ and she takes a seat opposite.

Trelawney looks at her closely. It feels like being examined under a magnifying glass, like she’s some sort of squishy little bug and Trelawney is a scientist. Or something.

‘Thank you for your response to my letter’ she starts, bravely. She holds her hands clasped in her lap, and drags her forefinger around and over her thumb nail, feeling the chewed ragged edge. ‘It’s very kind of you to meet me.’

Trelawney drains her tea, and pushes the tea cup forward, so that it rests on Lily-Lu’s side of the table.

‘You said in your letter that you have already shown some talent for tea leaves, correct?’

Lily-Lu nods.

‘I’m surprised. I had your father in my class for several years, and he showed no natural aptitude for the subject. Although these things can sometimes skip a generation or so. In my family it’s skipped three. My great-great-grandmother was an excellent seer. Cassandra. I’d like you to read my tea leaves, if you can.’

‘Oh, ok. Of course.’ Lily-Lu mutters, and takes the cup.

She glances at Trelawney again, but the woman is watching intensely, barely blinking.

The last time she did this properly was over six months ago, in Florean Fortescue’s ice cream parlour, with her mum and dad. They’ve struggled to find a teacher for her, Ginny assured Lily-Lu that they were looking, but it was hard to prove someone’s credentials in this area - for obvious reasons. The plan had been to have some lessons over the summer, but that’s fallen by the wayside.

Lily-Lu wonders if you can be out of practice with something like this. Or maybe it’s like riding a bike.

The teacup is pink and white patterned, with gold weaving through, almost like a mosaic.Trelawney’s had rooibos tea and it smells sweet. Lily-Lu takes a deep breath and holds the tea cup in front of her.

It feels - warm. Warm and dozy, she can almost smell incense in the air, and in her mind’s eye she can see a small tower, with hundreds of doilies.

She twists the cup to the right and to the left, back and forth, and its like looking at something underwater, she has to focus her eyes in a specific way, at a specific depth to see anything. And what she does see doesn’t always make sense.

‘um, so. I think that - um, you have a cat. Obviously,’ and she gestures to the cat still on the table, ‘but you have another cat, a ginger one. I think it’s been lost or missing or ran away, but I think - I think its. Maybe it’s going to come back?’

She trails off lamely, and looks up at Trelawney from under her eyelashes.

The woman is still watching intently, and says nothing so Lily-Lu glances back down at the tea cup, and gazes again. After a moment ‘you’re going to have more cats’ she says, slightly stronger, trying to inject a level of confidence into her voice. ‘Kittens, maybe.’

And she puts the tea cup back on the table, and nods her head.

Trelawney is _still watching,_ does this woman ever blink?

‘Thank you’ she says, ‘That’ll be all for today,’ and she makes to get up.

‘What?’ Lily-Lu says, ‘That’s all? Can you teach me?’

‘Well that very much depends, my dear.’

‘On?’

‘On?’

‘On what does it depend?’

‘On whether your prediction today comes true.’

Lily-Lu is floored. That prediction may come true, but there’s no telling as to when.

‘I really, really need to learn soon though,’ she says desperately.

‘Goodbye my dear’ and Trelawney gets up, scoops the cat up under her arm, and leaves in a cloud of overly sweet perfume.

Lily-Lu heads back, drags her feet, and gets an earlier train than than the one she’d planned to.

The only good thing, is that she’s home in plenty of time for dinner. No one even noticed she was gone, and even though that’s what she wanted, it makes her feel insignificant.

————

Harry sighs, deeply, takes his glasses off, and rests his head on his desk with his eyes closed. It’s early evening, and they’re still at the office.

Ron sighs, and pats him on his shoulder comfortingly.

‘I know buddy. We’ll find something,’ Rons says, ‘there’ll be another sighting soon, or there’ll be more evidence crop up. We still haven’t got Jim’s wand. That’s a lead still open.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

Ron wonders over to the sideboard, and pours another cup of coffee for both of them. ‘How’s Jim today?’

‘Better. They’ve started a round of anti-scourge potions, and he seems to be responding well to them.’

‘Good. Are you going to see him later?’

‘Yeah, I’ll see him through the evening rounds and then leave him. Go back in the morning. Security there isn’t that great, I don’t like to leave him.’

Ron frowns. ‘There are aurors on the ward.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you want my advice?’

Harry takes the coffee Ron offers, and eyes him suspiciously, as he sprawls himself down in the chair opposite.

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘No. Listen to me. My advice is don’t forget that you have more than one kid-‘

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Steady,’ Ron soothes, holding his hand out placating. ‘Jim is ok. He’s safe, in hospital, with aurors that we know and trust and you are their boss. If anything goes wrong, they’re on the chopping block. _Jim’s ok._ You have two other kids who are dealing with a lot right now, who have barely seen you for weeks. Rose is doing her best for Al, but she says that Lulu has been haunting around the Burrow, disappearing for hours.’

He takes a long gulp of coffee.

‘It’s not my place to tell you what to do with your kids, and you know that I think you and Gin are good parents, but maybe you need to switch your attention for a couple of days.’

Harry closes his eyes, and presses his palms against them.

‘I know.’ Ron says, ‘It’s not been easy. But Jim’s ok. And you’re not even supposed to be working on this investigation. No one is going to judge if you take a day or so to sort your family out.’

‘That’s good advice.’ Harry says reluctantly, and Ron smiles, wide and genuine.

‘It’s been known to happen,’ and then he sobers, ‘I’d just hate for you to miss something going on with them.’

Harry sucks in a deep breath, holds for a moment, and nods. He looks at his friend, his closest oldest friend, and narrows his eyes.

‘Ok then, you give good advice, and I might, in this instance, take it. One one condition.’

‘They’re your kids mate, it’s not really my problem if you take my advice or not.’

‘You,’ Harry continues, as if Ron hasn’t spoken, ‘need to tell me something that I think I know, but that I don’t officially know, so that I am allowed to know it officially. Because if what I think I know isn’t true, I might get punched in the face for even thinking it. Do you follow me?’

It’s not the most eloquent he’s ever been, but Ron trying to stifle his smile is confirmation that he knows exactly what Harry means. Even so, he denies it.

‘Dunno what you’re talking about.’

‘Don’t lie!’

‘I’m not.’

‘Just tell me. I won’t tell anyone.’

‘You’ll tell Ginny.’

‘Mate, I think Ginny already knows. I won’t tell your mum, for what that’s worth.’

Ron thinks for a second, but then the grin he’s been trying to hide breaks across his face. It’s a particularly soppy look, and Harry finds himself smiling in return, despite everything.

‘Yeah alright. You’re right. We’re having another baby. Don’t tell Hermione I told you. She wanted us to do it together.’

Harry’s already got to his feet, and he pulls Ron into a hug. ‘Congratulations,’ he says, thumping Ron on the back, and Ron ducks his head.

‘Thanks. It’s pretty early still, so we’re not telling people just yet.’

‘I wouldn’t know if Hermione hadn’t shown up here in her pyjamas, the day of the attack.’

Ron laughs, ‘yeah, she said she thought she’d given it away, but that it was only you.’

‘It’s only me.’ Harry confirms, and he likes the sound of that. It sounds like another version of the ‘just Harry’ mantra he’d had for most of his teenage years.

‘Right’ Ron says, clapping his hands and gesturing for Harry to get going. ‘Go check on Jim, reassure your paranoia, and then go and check on your other guys before either of them does something stupid.’

‘Good plan, good plan. See you later mate.’

And Harry chugs the last of his coffee, and apparates to St Mungo’s.

————

Despite his best intentions, he doesn’t make it home to the Burrow before Albus and Lily-Lu go to bed.

The worst thing, is that he doesn’t even feel that guilty, as he joins Ginny in their actual bed in their actual home and they forget about everything for a bit. It’s the best night’s sleep he’s had in weeks.

He should have known better. He should have taken Ron’s advice.

————

Harry wakes the next morning to sunlight streaming through the window, and his beautiful wife tangled up in the blankets beside him.

He reaches over to the alarm clock, and it reads seven forty-five, so he huffs out a heavy breath. He leans over and spies Ginny’s shoulder sticking out of the top of the duvet, and he pokes her.

‘Gin’ he stage whispers, and she grunts and presses her face closer into the pillow.

He gives it a second.

‘Gin’ he whispers again, and pokes her again.

‘Go away,’ she groans, but obligingly she rolls over so she’s facing him and cracks an eye open, peering up at him. ‘What d’you want?’

Harry stifles a grin. He reaches out and pulls her close kissing her softly.

‘Morning’ he says simply, and she shifts turning fully and kisses him back.

‘What’s the plan today?’ Ginny says twenty minutes later once they’ve woken fully. ‘Are you working today?’

Harry sighs. ‘I dunno. Could do.’

‘Take the day off.’

‘Could do.’

Ginny smacks him on the shoulder.

‘Make a decision,’ she says, ‘and stick to it. Visiting starts at nine so I’ll go to the hosp and see Jim. You could come with.’

Harry leans back and looks at the ceiling. He should go and see Albus and Lily-Lu. That’s what he should do today. Go and talk to them and make sure they’re ok. But he’s finding it hard to prioritise them, when he knows they’re safe. He knows they’re well looked after and cared for.

Seeing James in the hospital bed still sends Harry’s blood pressure rocketing up. Thinking of him alone in the hospital where Harry can’t get to him or protect him. It makes him feel sick.

‘Don’t think too hard,’ Ginny whispers, and heaves herself up so she’s lying almost completely on top of him. ‘Go to work if it makes you feel better. Maybe try and make it to the Burrow for dinner and see Al and Lulu.’

‘Yeah, good idea.’

‘Ok’ Ginny sighs, and looks him closely in the face.

‘I love you,’ Harry says and Ginny kisses him again.

‘I love you too.’

————

Trelawney writes back to Lily-Lu the following morning, saying she is now the proud owner of five kittens and a returned ginger cat. She asks Lily-Lu if she would like to meet in Exeter again.

Lily-Lu’s parents both join them for dinner at the Burrow for the first time in three weeks.

She’s not sure if these events are related.

————

She does go and see Trelawney the next day.

It goes as smoothly as the first journey, although Harry is at the Burrow when she appears for dinner, (she hadn’t expected him, because he’d been round the day before) and that almost throws her off.

She thinks she gets away with it, and when he asks what she’s been up to, she flouts the line about tea leaf reading - which isn’t a lie, technically - and he’s suitably interested and impressed. They talk for almost an hour and a half, and it’s so _normal_ that she nearly confesses what she’s been up to and is ready to throw herself on his mercy.

But Trelawney had said that tea leaves will only get her so far, and that real fortune telling comes from crystal ball reading. She’s going to bring Lily-Lu a crystal ball to practice on the next time that they meet, and that will _really_ help her family so she doesn’t say anything. Then Albus and Ginny join them and the moment to confess is gone.

But they sit around the table for hours, until gone ten, and talk and laugh and she’s never heard Albus talk so much in her life. He seems to be overcompensating for her quietness and James’ absence.

If she ignores the fact that James is missing, it feels normal.

————

She sneaks out the following day, four weeks exactly since the attack, to see Trewlawny again.

This is a mistake.

————

Harry gets a report from Proudfoot the same day, that says a suspicious woman has been spotted hanging around the ward in St Mungo’s.

She has long dark hair and a high forehead. The kind of description that could identify her as an aristocrat - a Black or Lestrange, possibly - and that’s enough to feed Harry’s paranoia.

James is doing well and has been complaining for a good week now about how he wants to go home. Hannah Abbott shows Ginny how to change his bandages and the potions regime to keep him on. Harry weighs up the pros and cons, and by early afternoon has decided that he wants to take James home.

In fact, he’s decided that he _is_ taking James home, no matter what the healers say.

It takes a lot of paperwork, and healers keep coming to assess and judge James’ progress, but Harry puts on his best auror face, stern and unforgiving, and strikes the fear of god into the healers. To James’ great amusement, if his continued glances in Harry’s direction and his sniggering into his cup of tea is anything to go by.

They get James upright and dressed in tracky bottoms and a t-shirt, and he looses his dignity a little bit when it becomes apparent that he can’t bend over fully to pull up his own pants, so he sticks his head out the bathroom door and shouts down the whole ward for Harry to come and help him.

Harry thinks he does quite well in keeping an impartial face, but James’ glare suggests differently.

‘You’ll be doing the same for me someday soon,’ Harry says, only half joking, and James just shakes his head and says no he won’t.

Harry and Ginny prop James up, and he walks slowly but fairly steadily to the main lobby with the floo fireplaces. James is gracious enough to let Ginny hold his hand and arm on his right side, ostensibly to support him, but really it’s more for Ginny’s comfort than for his, and Harry carries the bag with all the stuff James has accumulated through his month-long stay. For Harry it feels like taking a deep breath after being under water.

This feeling doesn’t last long.

When they get back to the Burrow, Harry expects joyful faces and a family dinner. He finds chaos. They have to half lie, half sit James on the sofa and prop him up with cushions, and when Harry grabs Hermione around the wrist as she hurries to the kitchen, she tells him that the wards have fallen.

_The wards have fallen._

The wards that Molly, Arthur, Ron and _Bill,_ four experienced and powerful wizards one of whom is a _curse breaker,_ erected only _four weeks_ before, have fallen with no explanation and no cause.

_Merlin’s beard._

They’re blustering around, trying to reinstall the foundations of the wards quickly, Molly talking a mile a minute and Ron disappearing to get George and Percy to come and help, when Harry looks out the window above the kitchen sink, and sees a woman in black robes.

The same woman, if the description is accurate, who was seen skulking around St Mungo’s.

The best thing about being an auror, is that Harry’s instincts are top notch, and his training means there’s no place for panic. Even here, where the stakes are higher than ever, he has to come up with a plan, and get moving quickly.

In that second, where he gazes at the woman, and adrenaline flows around his body, he knows where they have to go.

He is cool, and calm, and not panicked.

He sprints into the living room, catches Ginny just as she’s heading up the stairs, and tells her ‘take the children, take everyone, now, go to Grimmauld Place.’ The defences on the old London house are comparable to none.

Her eyes widen, and she looks to argue but there’s no time for that.

‘They’re already here,’ he says, still calm. ‘You need to go now. Floo, and close the floo after you. I’ll apparate as soon as I’m done here.’

He can see out of the corner of his eye Albus stood at the top of the stairs, so he turns and says ‘Albus, help mum with James’ and he doesn’t wait for the nod, but he expects his son to listen to him, and he runs to the kitchen and out the back door.

He doesn’t recognise the woman. He judges her too young to have been a death eater when Voldemort was alive, she’s barely older than Teddy he reckons, so maybe the daughter of someone?

She casts first.

The duel doesn’t last long.

She’s alone, apparently. Harry has in the back of his mind the worry of at least two more accomplices, but they haven’t appeared. He’s confident in his ability to take on three alone anyway. If Ron gets his arse back here quickly they could easily take on double that, with George, triple.

She strikes, and Harry blocks it, feints left, goes right and sends a stunner. She blocks, but only just, and the next curse she sends his way is sloppy and weak. He dismantles it, and turns it back on her.

Back and forth they go for a moment, Harry unwilling to move from his position in front of the house until he can be certain that Ginny and the kids have gone. He’s also stalling. He knows Ron should be on his way back, and once he’s here they can get her.

Sure enough, minutes later the sound of apparition reaches Harry, and the woman may be able to duck and doge Harry’s spells when she can see where they’re coming from, but she’s not skilled enough to battle with three experienced wizards, and after a moment she topples over stunned.

Harry’s breathing hard, and when he looks over Ron looks grim and George is shaking.

Ron calls it in, whilst Harry does a quick run around the house to check everyone’s gone, and then he blocks the floo and casts anti-apparition wards. Simple enough, but basic protections.

Aurors arrive quickly - it’s embarrassing, for them, that the head of the DMLE has just been attacked in his own home. Makes it look like they don’t know what they’re doing, that they can’t protect their own.

They arrest the woman, and take her away. They run around the house, but there’s no obvious break ins or points of weakness.

It’s growing dark, when they apparate to Grimmauld Place.

It’s like some bad dream, everything he never wanted for his children, his family, coming true.

Everyone’s huddled in the dining room when he and Ron get there. Molly and Arthur, Hermione, Ginny and the kids. 

There are hugs and kisses, and words of reassurance, and Harry does a brief headcount, and takes a deep breath when he sees that everyone is accounted for.

There’s a moment of stunned silence.

‘Why would the wards fall?’ Ron voices the question on everyone’s mind, ‘I did some of them myself, Bill did most of them. There’s no reason for them to fall after only four weeks. Not if they’re being treated properly. Everyone’s been checking in and out, no one’s been sneaking out have they? Stretching the wards beyond the capacity?’

There are shakes of the head around the table, and Harry looks at each of his kids in turn, Albus is shaking his head loosely, James hasn’t even been here, and Lily-Lu -

It takes only a glance at his daughter’s face to know.

Her face is slowly turning pink, all the blood rushing to her cheeks, and her eyes are wide, _huge,_ and her mouth has dropped open. And he knows, _he knows,_ that this isn’t intentional, the tears that he can already see in her eyes and her general kindhearted nature are genuine, and he knows that his daughter wouldn’t put them at risk intentionally, but he has to push down the irritation he can feel in his chest.

He told them to stay put. He told them not to leave the Burrow. And it’s clear that she’s ignored this.

She catches his eye, and she moves her mouth as if to speak but she can’t find the words, and he won’t embarrass her by calling her out in front of everyone. They’ll find out, of course, but there’s a difference between him telling them, and him making her stand in front of her whole family and admit she’s put them in danger.

‘Ok, Gin, Al, will you go and get Jim settled? There’s bedrooms upstairs, or there’s a living room across. You’ll need some potions soon too. We’ll have to go back to the Burrow and get stuff.’

‘We’ll need dinner,’ Molly says, decisively, ‘I’ll go with you and get supplies. Let me see what’s here.’

Harry catches Ginny’s eye, and inclines his head slightly to Lily-Lu, and Ginny glances over at her, where she’s sat now looking at her lap, looking like she wishes the ground would open up and swallow her whole, and when Ginny turns back to him she’s twisted her mouth and her eyes flash, but he mouths ‘it’s ok’ to her.

When there’s enough commotion to hide it, he goes over to Lily-Lu, takes her by the hand and they leave the room. He takes her to the small office on the first floor, where they won’t be disturbed, and despite his indication that he could handle it, Ginny follows them.

They shut the door, and the silence is heavy.

Ginny leans by the door.

‘I didn’t know,’ Lily-Lu says, and her voice is wobbly and quiet, ‘I - I didn’t know about the wards.’

It’s not quite a confession, but it confirms what they already know.

‘I told you to stay at the Burrow,’ Ginny snaps, ‘Do you think I say things just to hear myself talk?’

Lily-Lu shakes her head. She’s still looking at the ground, she won’t look up.

‘Ok.’ Harry sighs, and he pushes down all his irritation and worry, and tries desperately to keep his face calm and impartial. Facing down an unknown foe in a duel is easier than this.

He sits down, because he has horrible memories of his uncle towering over him, and he’s resolute that he won’t do that to his own children.

So he sits, in the wonky desk chair, and he takes Lily-Lu’s hands again, moves her so she’s stood in front of him, and he ducks his head so he can look her in the face.

‘I’m not mad,’ he says urgently, and hopes that the expression on his face doesn’t contradict this statement, ‘I’m not mad, but I need you to tell me the truth now, and I need you to tell me everything.’ His heart is pounding in his chest, and he can’t tell if he’s angry or worried, or frightened that his twelve year old daughter has been sneaking out when she’s already been attacked this summer, and worse, no one noticed.

‘Ok’ she breathes, and she nods. She looks defeated, almost resigned and Harry doesn’t like it but he can’t fix this until she tells him the truth.

‘Where did you go?’

A pause, and she breathes in deep to brace herself. ‘Exeter,’ she says.

‘Exeter!’ Ginny repeats.

‘What were you doing in Exeter?’ Harry says.

Her bottom lip wobbles. ‘I was meeting this witch, and she was teaching me about divination and fortune telling.’

Ginny’s draw drops. It’s only through immense self control that Harry’s doesn’t.

‘How many times have you been to Exeter?’

‘Three.’

Ginny looks like she’s about to shout. Harry nods his head. Three times would be enough to break the wards. They’re tied to the people _inside_ the properly rather than to the property itself. This prevents having a ‘line’ where on one side you’re safe and on the other you’re not. They thought this was safer, and less of a temptation, lest someone dare someone else to cross the line.

By going to Exeter without ‘checking out’ of the wards, she’ll have stretched them. Once you might get away with, Exeter wasn’t that far really. Twice Harry would have expected the wards to snap. It’s a testament to how strong the wards were, that they lasted being stretched to Exeter and back _three times._

The wards aside, she’s been meeting _a stranger,_ without anyone knowing where she was or who she was meeting. This person could have persuaded her to go with them, and they wouldn’t have known she was gone until it was too late.

Ron’s words from last week drift to mind. ‘ _Go home’_ he’d said, ‘ _before one of your other guys does something stupid.’_ But he hadn’t, had he? And here they were.

‘Why do you think we sent you to the Burrow? To have a jolly? Or to keep you safe?’ Ginny says, and she means the questions to be rhetorical, but Lily-Lu answers.

‘So that Nanna and Grampy could watch us because you’ve been so busy. I didn’t know that someone was still after us. I didn’t know it wasn’t safe.’

And that makes them both pause.

How could she have not known that?

Except, he didn’t tell her, not explicitly, and when he looks over his shoulder at Ginny, she’s raised her eyebrows and it looks like she hasn’t either.

_Merlin._

Had they just expected her to know?

Lily-Lu is crying now, he realises, when she lifts a hand out of his to wipe at her cheek, and nose. She lowers her arm, and puts her hand back in his. It’s enough to allow the irritation and anger to seep away, and for him to pull himself together.

‘Ok, start at the beginning. I need you to tell me the truth. What’s been going on?’

And fair enough, she does.

She tells them, slowly, stopping and starting, but she does tell them. How she felt it was her fault that she hadn’t known about the attack on her and James. How she realised that there were a couple of hours each afternoon where no one would notice that she was missing. How she got books from Teddy, and found the addresses in the directory. That she’d written to several people, and only Trewlawny had written back.

‘And I knew that she used to teach, yeah, she used to teach at Hogwarts, so - so I thought it would be safe to go and meet with her’ she says, and honestly, Harry can’t fault that logic. The relief he feels when he realises the witch she’s been meeting with is _Trewlawny_ is immense. She’s not the teacher they would have chosen, and he and Ginny had dismissed her as an option months ago due to her complicated relationship with the Potter family, and the fact that she’s a fraud most of the time, but she’s safe enough.

Lily-Lu trails off. ‘I didn’t know about the wards,’ she whispers again, ‘I would never have gone if I’d known.’

It’s difficult. Harry doesn’t quite know what to say. On one hand, he understands. _He does._ How many times when he had been a teenager had he just wished that the adults around him would tell him the truth, trust him with the truth. How many times had he made mistakes because he only knew half the information?

But they had told her to stay at the Burrow, and she had ignored this instruction. She hadn’t trusted _them_ to know what they were talking about, to make decisions for her safety.

 _Except,_ the horrible little voice in the back of his head whispers, _that’s not exactly true is it?_ And it wasn’t. It _was_ safer for them at the Burrow that was true, but he and Ginny had spent several nights at home since the attack, with no worry for their safety. They could have taken her and Albus back home, if they’d wanted to. It was just _easier_ for them to be at the Burrow.

 _Easier for who?_ For him and Ginny, certainly. For her and Albus?

Maybe not.

What a mess.

‘Ok’ he says eventually, and he raises her hands still clasped in his and kisses them. ‘Ok, the important thing here, is that everyone is ok, and there’s no long term damage. Everything else we can deal with, ok?’ And he ducks his head again to peer at her face, partially hidden by her hair, but she won’t look him in the eye.

‘We’ll think about the consequences of this,’ Ginny says, ‘Grounding or whatever, but we won’t decide that now.’

Lily-Lu nods, silent.

‘Is there anything else you want to say?’ Harry asks gently, but she just shakes her head. ‘Ok, you can go.’

Lily-Lu extracts her hands, and turns to the door without looking at either of them. She opens it a crack and sneaks out.

‘Shit’ Ginny says, flatly.

‘Yeah’

————

He mutters the story to Ron and Hermione. He’ll tell Molly and Arthur after dinner. Ron catches his eye, and unspoken between them is the advice he gave last week.

Lily-Lu is silent at dinner, won’t meet anyone’s eye and answers only yes or no to questions.

She takes herself off to bed at seven thirty, once Harry and Ron return from the Burrow with clothes, and wash things.

There’s one more person he needs to speak to.

It’s easy to grab Albus for a quiet talk, and his surprise at the news that Lily-Lu has been sneaking out is genuine enough that Harry believes he didn’t know. And that sits wrong with Harry, something twisting uncomfortably in his gut. In this large, happy, loving family, no one noticed when Lily-Lu disappeared for hours at a time, on three separate occasions.

And it seems like, on one occasion, he’d spent the whole evening with her directly following one of her trips to Exeter. He’d thought her quiet, at the time, and more reserved than normal, but he’d put that down to the situation as a whole. That was foolish.

After all no one noticed Ginny’s suffering with Tom Riddle’s diary until it was almost too late. It’s not an exact comparison, but he feels that uncomfortable feeling at the memory of Ginny small and almost dead in the chamber of secrets.

He should have noticed the change in his own daughter.

He should have noticed.

————

Lily-Lu feels _awful._ She can’t remember a time when she’s felt worse.

She suffers through dinner, and at the earliest opportunity takes herself away to the camp bed they’ve set up for her in the room she’s sharing with Rose. She washes up, and by the time she can hear them finally tidying away the dinner mess, she’s already in bed wishing for sleep.

_She did this._

_This is her fault._

She feels sick, hollow and empty. She has put her whole family at risk, by her stupid sneaking out. All she wanted to do was protect them, and she’s done the exact opposite.

She’ll never forget the look on her father’s face as he’d caught her eye from across the dining table. As he realised that, yes, someone had been sneaking out and yes, it was her. He hadn’t even looked angry. She thinks she could have handled anger - if they had shouted she could have shouted back, but this quiet disappointment cuts her so deeply, that all she can feel deep in her bones is _guilt._ Her father has worked so hard to protect them, and she’s undermined it all.

How could she be so stupid? How had she not realised that _of course_ the people who had attacked her and James hadn’t just disappeared. Of course they were still out there, and the Burrow was the safest place for them to be.

Why hadn’t she thought of that?

Lily-Lu lies in bed for hours, trying to sleep but she’s too hyped up. She’s still awake when Rose comes to bed, and she can hear her cousin getting ready for bed, pottering around. And an hour later she can hear Rose’s soft breaths even out as she drifts off, and she has no trouble getting to sleep.

It’s past midnight, when Lily-Lu can’t fight it any longer. She gets out of bed, quetly, so silently, and tip toes out of the room, across the hall and into the bathroom. She turns the side light on, so the dingy creepy bathroom is half lit, and it would scare her if she had any emotional space to be scared. But there is only horrible overwhelming guilt.

She sits on the floor, and cries.

She’s been sat on the floor sniffling for about twenty minutes, long enough for her bum to go numb, when there’s a gentle knock on the door, and it nearly frightens her out of her skin.

She doesn’t answer.

There’s another knock, and then ‘Lulu?’ James whispers through the door. ‘Are you ok?’ He waits a moment and then, ‘You’re going to have to let me in, because I don’t have a wand at the moment. I can’t open the door.’

But he twists the handle anyway, and the door opens. She hadn’t locked it.

He takes one look at her huddled on the floor leaning against the bath, and his whole face collapses. ‘Oh Lulu’ he sighs, and he struggles for a moment, but slides slowly down the wall opposite her until they’re sat across from each other.

He reaches out his hand, and grabs her by the wrist, and hauls her forward. It must hurt him, she’s seen him hobbling around with his arm pressed against his left side, but he doesn’t let it show, until she’s knelt before him, and he can reach out put his hand on his face.

‘Hey, it’s ok’ and he’s so kind and gentle, and she can hardly look at him before she’s collapsed back into sobs.

He nods, as if he’d expected that, and he pulls her forward, and forward, even though she’s shaking her head because she messed up and she doesn’t _deserve_ to be comforted. But James is bigger than her, and he holds her tight until she’s pressed against him and she’s still not quite over the fact that she thought he was dead, and so she clings on and just cries.

When she’s quieted a bit, James starts to talk.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he says, ‘the attack was not your fault, and the wards are not your fault-‘

‘The wards _are_ my fault.’

‘You didn’t know. You had the best intentions. Someone should have told you how the wards worked and you would never have done it, would you?’

‘No! Never!’

‘Then this isn’t your fault, ok, it’s no one’s fault, sometimes these things just happen.’

‘They’re going to hate me.’

James stokes her hair. ‘No one’s going to hate you. We love you, I love you and it’s all going to be ok.’

‘I just wanted to learn more so I could stop these things from happening,’ she sobs, and James pulls back and makes her look him straight in the face.

They’re nearly nose to nose. ‘Look at me,’ he says unnecessarily, ‘this is important. It is not your responsibility to see the future. Just because you can, doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility to see all the bad things that might happen and prevent them. No one expects that of you.’

‘I expect that of me.’

‘You don’t have to. It’s not your responsibility.’

And honestly, it’s such a relief to hear someone say those words to her. She doesn’t believe them, not entirely, but it’s such a _heavy_ responsibility, that she didn’t realise how much she needed to hear that sentiment until James whispers it to her now.

‘This isn’t your responsibility,’ he repeats, ‘no one expects that. Mum and dad, they don’t expect it.’

She doesn’t have anything to say, so she presses her face back into his shoulder.

Eventually they have to stand, because James can’t sit any longer, and she has to help him up, and he gets up awkwardly. Lily-Lu wipes her eyes, and takes some toilet paper to blow her nose, and James watches her closely. She can see he’s thinking intently.

They tip toe back out into the corridor. Lily-Lu makes to go back into her room with Rose, but Jim grabs her hand. ‘Come in with us’ he whispers, and they go into the boys’ room.

Albus is awake when they get in, and he raises his head off the pillow slightly.

‘Al’ James calls.

‘Yeah?’ Al mutters.

‘Can you kick Hugo out? Lulu’s going to come in with us. I’d carry him but I can’t.’

There’s a pause, and then Albus rolls out of bed, and goes over to Hugo. He doesn’t bother waking the boy, just slides his hands under him, blankets and all, and with a slight grunt lifts his cousin up.

Hugo stirs slightly.

Albus disappears out the door, and dumps Hugo into the camp bed in the other room. Lily-Lu can hear Albus and Rose whispering.

‘You took the blankets’ Lily-Lu whispers when he comes back, and he looks lost for a second, still half asleep.

He says ‘Sorry Lu, you’ll have to share with us,’ and he clambers back into the double bed.

James pokes her in the side, and she clambers into the middle, and James follows.

It’s not the biggest double bed, so they’re tucked quite closely together. Albus kicks her accidentally and mutters ‘sorry’, James turns on his bad side, and then fidgets and turns back over. James hogs the covers, so Lily-Lu and Albus have to pull it back, hard.

It’s not the best night’s sleep she’s ever had, but worrying about kicking James and trying to steal the blankets back means she’s not thinking about how she’s endangered her whole family.

She falls asleep, toes pressed against James’ calf, and Albus snoring in her ear.

————

Harry can’t sleep, so he gets up for a coffee. When he passes the girls’ room, he pokes his head around the door, to check on Lily-Lu but he’s met with Hugo in the camp bed instead.

When he pokes his head around the boys’ room, he finds his three kids all tucked together like puppies in the double bed. Albus and Lily-Lu are fast asleep, but James raises his hand and waves.

‘You ok buddy?’ Harry whispers, and James nods. ‘Sleep well’ he calls, and Harry closes the door gently.

————

Just when Harry thought life couldn’t get much worse, the next morning Draco Malfoy and his son turn up at the door of Grimmauld Place.

It’s hard to say who’s more surprised.

Harry invites them in, he may as well. But he leaves them loitering in the hallway, with Malfoy’s shout of ‘what the hell are you doing in my mother’s house Potter?’ following behind him.

He needs more coffee before he deals with this shit.

————


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer - there is a character later on who claims to be a therapist/councillor and he gives some advice. I am not a trained therapist in any way, shape, or form so take the advice with a pinch of salt. I made it up!

————

When Lily-Lu comes down the next morning, about half past ten, she has a horrible headache, her eyes are dry and gritty, and she sees Albus’ friend Scorpius sat at the breakfast table.

With a man who must be Scorpius’ father.

She catches Ginny’s eye, and even though Lily-Lu supposes she’s in disgrace for her Exeter trips, Ginny just rolls her eyes, shakes her head, and mouths ‘no idea’. Lily-Lu shrugs.

She doesn’t see the way her mother’s face softens at the sight of her, and when she helps herself to tea on the side, Ginny reaches out and strokes a hand down Lily-Lu’s back and it’s nice. She feels like she hasn’t seen Ginny in _forever._

Ginny obviously feels the same, because she pats the chair next to her and Lily-Lu sits obligingly.

 _Or maybe,_ that nasty guilty voice in her head says, _maybe she wants to keep an eye on you._

Maybe it’s both, she thinks bravely, and quietly tucks into her cereal with Ginny’s arm resting around the back of her chair.

————

So it turns out, that Scorpius and his father (whose name is Draco, apparently, and Lily-Lu thought _her_ parents were bad at picking baby names) always spend two weeks in Grimmauld Place over the summer, so they can experience London and spend time together, which Lily-Lu thinks is sweet.

This leads to a long discussion that she doesn’t fully understand about the ownership of the house. Harry says, resolutely, over his sixth cup of coffee, that the house was left to him when his Godfather died. That Sirius Black left it to Harry in his will.

Draco Malfoy says that the house belonged to the Black _family,_ and when Sirius Black died, inheritance went to his surviving family - his cousins Andromeda and Narcissa.

Harry is adamant that Draco Malfoy shouldn’t even be able to get into the house through the wards. Malfoy laughs and says that no wards that Harry can ever put up will keep Black blood from accessing the house. This leads to an even longer discussion about whether they were actually safe here in the war, or if Bellatrix Lestrange could always walk up to Grimmauld Place while they were here. They decide no, that the presence of Sirius Black whilst alive would have provided enough security to ward the house against his cousins.

It’s very long winded and confusing, and, in Lily-Lu’s opinion, ultimately pointless discussion.

The crux of it, is that the Malfoy Manor ( _Manor_ Albus mouths with a chuckle) is being deep cleaned and they can’t go back there. They could stay in hotel, ‘but that would be terribly inconvenient’ Malfoy sneers, and everyone looks to Harry, who’s drinking what must be his eighth cup of coffee, if the movement of his jittery leg is anything to go by, and he sort of shrugs and says ‘stay then’ and it’s both an invitation and a challenge.

Ginny sighs deeply, and Lily-Lu catches her swapping the coffee in the kitchen to decaf about an hour later.

It’s worth it, sort of, when Uncle Ron turns up that evening, strides into the dining room expecting to see his loving family, and is met by Draco Malfoy tucking into dinner.

He goes sort of speechless, and turns an awkward pink colour, and Rose nearly chokes on her Yorkshire pudding she’s laughing so much.

No-one says anything to Lily-Lu about Exeter the whole day, and she’s not sure if she’s pleased or disappointed by that.

Albus gives her the last of the contraband chocolate frogs, and it has a ‘Bran the Bloodthirsty’ card which he doesn’t have so she gives it back.

————

The only good thing, Harry thinks, about Lily-Lu’s adventures to Exeter, and the resulting ward collapse, is that it’s kickstarted their investigation.

The woman has been identified as AngelicaOgden and whilst there’s no immediate links to pure blood supremacy or death eater activity, a raid of her living address reveals two men who are brought in for questioning, and robes and masks that match the description Lily-Lu gave five weeks previous.

In a way, it’s a relief. He hates the fact that his family were put at risk, but it’s inadvertently solved the problem.

Three arrests are made, and the report is on Harry’s desk for him to read when he’s ready. There’s no reason to think that these people - barely more than teenagers really - are part of a larger conspiracy, no evidence from reaching out to their contacts that they’re actually dangerous.

Ginny says it was unfortunate that they caught James and Lily-Lu alone. If she’d been there she could have brought her bat-bogy hex out of retirement. Or punched them in the face. ‘Either or’ she says with a shrug.

Harry doesn’t know whether to laugh or scold.

————

Harry and Ginny wave Lily-Lu over after dinner two days later, and she goes reluctantly.

She still can’t look them in the face properly, even though their attitude to her over the last couple of days has been normal. It feels a bit like whiplash - she’s risked the safety of her entire family, and yes, she’s had a bit of a telling off, but is that it?

They tuck her away in the kitchen, and Ginny says that when things go back to normal, she’s going to have broomstick privileges revoked for two weeks, no hockey for the rest of the summer, and she’s going to have to do extra chores for two weeks.

All in all, not a terrible punishment. She’s certainly had worse, which is very confusing. This is, by far, in her opinion, the worst thing she’s ever done. So, shouldn’t the punishment fit the crime?

But they’re acting like this is fine, and her dad wraps his arm around her and kisses her on the side of the head, and says ‘don’t worry about it anymore, ok? We’ll move past it now.’

And that’s fine for him to say. But she hadn’t even really apologised. To her parents sure, but not to Molly and Arthur, for putting their home at risk, not to her brothers or cousins for disrupting their summer.

It’s very upsetting.

————

‘Do you want anything from the house my sweet?’ Ginny asks Lily-Lu the next morning, and Lily-Lu shakes her head. Truthfully she can’t really remember what’s at their house, what’s in the Burrow, and what’s here.

Ginny disappears for an hour after breakfast and comes back with all the post from their house, and some clothes for James who claims to have been wearing the same pants for three days.

‘I though that was normal for you’ Albus comments snidely, which leads to a brief scuffle that has to be postponed because James isn’t really up for fighting, and it leaves him out of breath and hunched over.

But he throws a piece of pepper at Albus’ head with unwavering accuracy and it bounces off his forehead.

Albus looks likes he’s going to make a rude hand gesture, but Ginny’s warning glare over the post makes him sit back down.

Lily-Lu is opening post with Ginny, bills that she hands over to her mother, some work post for dad, a letter from Gwenog Jones that Ginny lets her open and read, and then her jaw drops open.

She reads the letter, once, twice, and when Ginny says ‘what’s the matter?’ Lily-Lu hands over the letter and in what she thinks is a very well contained squeal considering the news, shrieks ‘they want you to play in the World Cup final!’, and James nearly sends himself back to hospital when he jumps up and races over to them to read the letter over Ginny’s shoulder.

There’s a pause full of anticipation, and when a smug arrogant smirk slides across Ginny’s face, they all cheer.

Harry arrives looking disheveled and half asleep, as if he’s just rolled out of bed even though it’s nearly eleven o’clock, and he’s bleary eyed and confused at all the cheering. When he finally understands the letter, he has to read it three times pushing his glasses up his nose and peering, he whoops the loudest and punches the air.

They jump around like loons for a moment, whilst Scorpius and Rose looking on judgementally, and they chant ‘Potter, Potter’ like the harpies do when Ginny scores.

‘It turns out,’ Ginny tells Ron and Hermione later, the third time Lily-Lu has heard the story, ‘that the British team is talented yes, but inexperienced, and their lead chaser is out with injury. They asked Gwenog who could step in at the last minute, because, really, four weeks before the game is not enough time to train, who has experience to take on the lead chaser role. And she said me!’ is accompanied by an arrogant half shrug and tilt of the head.

Ron is more excited by the fact that this means they’re guaranteed tickets to the world cup final game, rather than the fact that his sister is playing, but privately Lily-Lu thinks Harry is excited enough for the both of them.

————

Harry also gets a letter, that came through the muggle post, from his cousin.

It’s an invitation to meet for a drink. The date Dudley has suggested is that afternoon.

————

Harry does go and meet Dudley, in the end. He calls up that morning, and apologises and makes his excuses. He also meets Dudley’s partner - Kit - a big man with a full beard and twinkling eyes. He reminds Harry of Dumbledore, somehow, his cheeky grin and knowing expression puts Harry at ease. And when he finds out that Kit works with traumatised children, well that just makes sense.

They sit in the garden of a pub two streets over from Grimmauld Place, and it’s not where Harry would have picked, but it’s nice.

————

It’s almost six weeks after James’ injury that Harry sees a spot of light at the end of the tunnel.

They’re having breakfast, the Grimmauld place dining room as long and sinister as it’s ever been, and it hurts to see his kids here, tucking in as if this is normal.

So, in an attempt to inject some normality into the situation, James and Ginny are having a loud conversation about quidditch. Of course. They’re giving a critical analysis of the Harpies last season.

Harry chips in.

‘Did you know’ he says, adopting a tone of _I’m a very important person and you’re lucky to have me,_ ‘I used to play quidditch.’

Immediately his boys look up, with matching smirks. Ginny has to hide her laugh behind her coffee cup, and even Lily-Lu smiles. Only Scorpius, bless him, takes the statement at face value.

‘I didn’t know that,’ he says, innocently, and Albus shoves him.

‘Don’t encourage him’ Albus snaps, but it’s too late, Harry launches into it.

‘Oh yes, I used to play for Gryffindor.’

Silence.

‘I was made seeker in my first year. And I was Gryffindor captain.’

No comment.

Harry puffs up his chest for full effect. He can see Lily-Lu grinning into her breakfast, and he wonders who’s going to crack first. Not Albus. He has an excellent poker face. James maybe.

‘Did you know, I was the youngest seeker in a century?’

That’s what does it. That, and the way he’s been brandishing his fork at them.

James snorts, loudly, into his orange juice and then there are giggles around the table.

‘That’s very impressive darling’ Ginny says idly, buttering more toast.

‘It really is,’ he nods. ‘I could have played professionally you know.’

‘Is that right?’ Scorpius asks kindly, Albus shakes his head and Ginny laughs, loudly.

‘Stop it,’ he mutters to Scorpius, but Harry rounds on them gleefully.

‘Oh yes, definitely.’

Ginny gestures to Lily-Lu. James elbows his sister gently. After a moment she says, ‘But you didn’t though did you?’ and it’s a bit uncertain, and not totally full of the attitude it may have been, but Harry’s glad to hear the teasing, and he plays along.

‘Well no, I didn’t.’

‘And you weren’t the lead chaser for the Holyhead Harpies were you?’ she presses.

‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘And! You haven’t been picked for the world cup starting line up have you?’

‘No.’

Lily-Lu nods. They all wait for her to deliver the punch line, and she ducks her head shy, even as she says, ‘Daddy I’m not sure that you’re that good at quidditch then, are you?’

Harry laughs, loud and genuine, as his kids snigger into their bacon and Ginny flips her hair mockingly. Scorpius seems to have got the joke, and he’s smiling but glancing at his own father at the other end of the table.

Harry doesn’t see Malfoy eying them, mouth pursed.

He feels happy.

He sighs theatrically, ‘I suppose I’m not really, am I? There’s only one quidditch superstar in this family.’

‘And it’s not you’ Ginny says tartly, winking at him from across the table.

More laughter.

————

Later that afternoon, Lily-Lu comes to him with a worried expression, and apologises.

————

Harry can feel anger building in his chest.

He’s not particularly bad tempered, and he’s not quick to rage. In his life he’s used anger to hide other, more difficult emotions, so his anger has always been complicated and painful.

This. This is dragon’s fire fury, pure and simple. He’s _angry._

How dare Malfoy do this? The first genuine interaction he’s had with his daughter this whole terrible summer, and Malfoy had to stick his nose in. 

Harry takes a breath outside the dining room, and tries to calm, to steady his shaking hands. He hasn’t felt this out of control in _years._

He pushes open the door, and he doesn’t know what his face is doing exactly, but it’s something. Malfoy takes one look at him, and any familiarity they had, any approaches towards friendship or civility is gone. Malfoy sneers.

‘What Potter?’

Harry takes a deep breath.

‘How dare you talk to my children?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘How dare you talk to my children about - about _respect._ How dare you try and discipline _my children.’_

Malfoy stands. ‘What are you talking about Potter’ he sighs. ‘I don’t know what you’re inanely -‘

Harry snaps, ‘You do not get to discipline my children!’ he shouts.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You told my daughter that she should _respect me_. That she was disrespectful, that she was cheeky and out of order! And do you know what she did? _She apologised to me,_ when there was nothing for her to apologise for.’

Understanding crosses Malfoy’s face.

‘Is that what this is about? Honestly Potter, your daughter was out of line and she needed to show you some respect. You should be grateful.’

And that’s the final straw.

‘Grateful! I should be grateful? You don’t get a say in how I raise my children.’

‘Well someone should. Your children are rude and disrespectful. They’re practically feral, someone should do some-‘

Harry sees red.

‘You do not get a say in how I raise my children! You speak of respect! What good is respect? Why should my children have to respect me? They’re not there to massage my ego. Respect is nothing! I need my children to _trust me._ Do you know how many adults I respected when I was young? Loads. Do you know how many I trusted? How many I felt I could go to for the _help that I desperately needed?_ None!’

He’s shouting now, loud and uncontrolled, fists clenched and mouth tight.

‘I don’t need my children’s respect, I need their trust. So that they think, when things have gone wrong, when shit has hit the fan and they’ve made a mistake, _because they are young and they’re going to make mistakes,_ that they can come and talk to me! They can come to me and we’ll sort it. And I’m not going to take parenting advice from a man who’s son is so frightened of disappointing him that they don’t talk about anything, ever.’

‘How dare yo-‘

‘I will be the butt of every joke, if that’s what it takes! They can rib me about quidditch, about anything, everything. They can laugh and make fun, because my children are _kind_ and _good_ and they’re not cruel. Because if I can be trusted to not overreact over _a joke,_ maybe I can be trusted with their secrets and their problems.’

Harry’s breathing hard, and Malfoy has wild look in his eyes.

‘My son-‘

‘Is so afraid of letting you down! Maybe look at your own child before you start judging mine.’

He’s vaguely aware of people in the corridor, of Ginny leaning against the doorframe, but he doesn’t care. Let them hear. There’s a lot he’ll do for his family, and punching Draco Malfoy in the face is just one of them.

Malfoy moves forward, and for a second Harry thinks they are actually going to fight, but Malfoy looks him in the eye and says:

‘I was trying to help you.’

‘Stay away from my children.’

Malfoy storms from the room, and Harry’s left shaking.

There’s a pause, and then Ginny approaches slowly. She puts her hand on Harry’s shoulder, and draws him in gently for a hug. He wraps his arms around her and tries to ignore how his hands are shaking.

‘It’s ok.’ She says.

‘He told Lulu-‘

‘I know what he said, and it’s ok. Have trust in our family, yeah. It’s going to take more than a stupid comment from Malfoy to undermine twelve, fifteen, seventeen years of trust, ok.’

Harry just breathes.

————

Unbeknownst to either of them, James, Albus and Lily-Lu sit at the top of the stairs, hidden by the bannister but hearing everything.

They’re speechless.

Lily-Lu can hear it, over and over in her head.

‘ _I don’t need them to respect me, I need them to trust me.’_

_‘I need them to trust me.’_

_‘What good is respect?’_

But she hasn’t though, had she? She hadn’t trusted her parents, her dad. And worst of all now they’ve lost trust in her.

 _‘_ Bloody hell’ Albus mutters, and James huffs a laugh.

Bloody hell indeed.

————

It’s late.

It’s approaching one in the morning, and Harry’s sat on one of the sofa’s in what is ostensibly the library of Grimmauld place. The room is dim, and creepy, flickering candles casting sinister shadows and he should go to bed, but he needs to finish this research, and every time he closes his eyes he can see Lily-Lu’s wide unsure eyes. Can hear her ‘daddy I’m really sorry if I upset you, it was a joke,’ and he feels the anger all over again. Wonders if this is why she didn’t tell him about Trelawney.

The door creaks, and James pokes his head around. Harry looks up and smiles. It’s good to see him upright. To see the colour back in his face, and his sense of humour back. It’s only the way he sometimes presses his arm against his left side, that reminds them of what he’s been through.

_What a summer._

‘Alright Jim? It’s late.’

‘Yeah, I wanted to talk to you.’

Harry nods, and gestures him in, and James joins him on the sofa.

‘What’s up?’

Outwardly Harry’s keep his expression calm and open. Inside, his heart is pounding. Late night talksusually mean something heavy, and he’s worried.

James struggles for words for a moment. Starts and then stops and then sighs. He shifts closer to Harry, so they’re sat close together, and wraps his arms around Harry. He wriggles closer, and Harry lifts his own arms in return and rests them on James’ back.

‘You ok?’ he murmurs in James’ ear.

James laughs, and it’s a soft gentle gesture from his usually boisterous son. Is this what it means to grow up Harry wonders.

‘I came to ask you that actually.’ James finally says. ‘So, full disclosure, we were not eavesdropping, not intentionally, but we were hiding on the first floor landing earlier, and we caught most of the shouting.’

Harry sighs, and drops his head more heavily on to James’ shoulder. James snorts.

‘I didn’t mean for you to hear all that. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. You’re right ok. I wanted to tell you, in case you needed to hear it. We do - we do trust you.’ He pulls back, so they can see each others faces. James gins, all crooked arrogance ‘when shit hits the fan, there’s only one person we’re going to come to. And that’s the truth. For all three of us. So don’t - don’t worry.’

Harry’s speechless. James looks away, grinning slightly.

‘Thank you’ Harry eventually manages. It’s a bit horse, embarrassingly but James doesn’t comment. He leans back into Harry, and they rest there for a moment.

‘I’m going to go to bed’ James says, and Harry nods and wishes him goodnight.

————

Two days later Albus finds Harry when he’s cooking dinner, and unprompted rests his head against Harry’s shoulder.

Harry turns off the hob for a moment, and wraps his arm around Albus’ shoulders.

‘You were right in what you said the other day,’ Albus starts, ‘about us, yes, but about Scorpius and his dad too.’

Harry swallows feeling suddenly guilty. In the moment, he hadn’t thought about how his words would affect Scorpius.

‘He’s been too worried to talk to his dad, for years really, but apparently they had a good chat the other day. He’s glad you said what you did.’

‘Good. I didn’t mean to cause trouble for him.’ He catches Albus’ eye, and grins wryly. ‘I lost my temper.’

Albus rolls his eyes. ‘Really?’ he says, all dripping sarcasm, ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

And Harry laughs and shoves him gently on the shoulder.

‘What’s for dinner? I’m starving.’

Harry turns the hob back on.

‘You literally had a snack an hour ago, don’t think I didn’t see you. You can’t be starving.’

‘I’m wasting away! Feed me.’

————

The only one who doesn’t address it is Lily-Lu.

Harry doesn’t know how to feel about that.

————

They head back home, eventually, for a hundred reasons.

Because Harry can’t stand that horrible old house any longer; because he can’t look at Malfoy’s stupid face one more time; because the risk is relatively low now they know the suspects are ‘stupid teenagers’ and not ‘time travelling death eaters’ (Ron’s suggestion) or something to that effect; because when asked whether she’d prefer to go to the Burrow or to go home, Lily-Lu says ‘I’d really like to go home please. I’ve haven’t really been there since last summer.’

And when he and Ginny work it out, they find she’s right. She’s spent less than two weeks at home since their ridiculous missing persons act the August previous.

What’s the point, Harry wonders, of providing a welcome and safe home for his family, if they’re never there to enjoy it.

So they go home, and Harry thinks that everything’s ok. He starts to relax.

And then Lily-Lu refuses to get out of bed for three days.

At first, it’s a mutter of ‘I’m not really feeling very well’, and they’re sympathetic. She’s worn down, did she eat something funny? She doesn’t have a temperature so they let her rest and bring her tea and food, and Harry’s convinced that a good nights sleep will do her wonders.

But then she doesn’t appear any better on the second day, and on the third, when Ginny pulls the blankets down to peer at her snoozing face and it looks like she’s been crying, for _hours,_ her face is red and sore, and then alarm bells really start ringing.

They have a whispered conversation in the kitchen, urgent, but they don’t know what to do. Should they make her get up? Should they leave her be? Should they make her talk about it - because there’s no doubt in Harry’s mind, that the ward situation is the cause of this, but what if it’s something else as well? Something worse? - or do they leave her to bring it up in her own time? Should they find someone for her to speak to? Does she need to go to a healer?

And on the morning of the fourth day, when she shows no intention to get up, and even James and Albus have failed to persuade her, Harry has a brain wave.

He’s flipping idly through the prophet, when he comes across an old picture of Dumbledore - apparently some witch is researching him again - and inspiration hits him.

_Kit._

He doesn’t think about it too hard, just leans over to the sideboard, picks up the phone and dials Dudley’s number.

He’s pouring himself another cup of coffee, phone cradled between his ear and shoulder, and when they answer the phone on the other end, he has the shock of his life and spills hot coffee over his hand and into his lap.

‘Dursley residence’ a woman says on the other end, and Harry’s delayed in responding, trying desperately to wipe off the coffee he’s just dumped all over himself, and not swear even though _that bloody hurt,_ so his voice is a bit unsteady when he says:

‘Petunia. It’s Harry. I was calling for Dudley. Is he there?’

The silence and static on the other end makes him think she’s just dropped whatever it was she was holding too.

‘Harry.’ She says, startled, and it’s not a question, but it sounds like one and _merlin_ he’s made a mistake here. It’s ten am on a Saturday morning - _of course_ Petunia is going to be visiting her only son and her grandchildren.

Oops.

Her voice is distant, as if she’s moved away from the receiver, but he can hear her say ‘Duddy, it’s Harry?’

There’s static on the other end, and then Dudley’s voice saying, ‘Hi buddy,’ clear and strong, and he’s never called Harry ‘buddy’ in his whole life, but Harry can appreciate the loyalty in the face of Dudley’s mother, so he says, ‘alright big D’ only half mocking, and Dudley laughs.

‘I got it mum,’ Dudley says, and there’s a pause as presumably Petunia leaves them.

‘Dudley I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think.’

‘Nah, you’re alright. We had a conversation about you the other evening, believe it or not. She knows that we’re - well, that we’re sort of friends now, I think she was just surprised.’

Harry feels suddenly fond, an emotion he never thought he’d feel for Dudley.

‘We are friends Dud. And to be honest I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or her. I’ve just chucked a whole pot of coffee over the kitchen.’

Dudley snorts. ‘What’s up?’

‘So, I was wondering if I could ask Kit for some advice?’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘He said he works with children, right? Who have been through a lot and he helps them? Is he like a therapist or something?’

‘Kind of, he does counselling more than therapy, but it’s all much of a muchness. He’d be glad to speak to you, hang on-‘ and then quieter, further away ‘Kit! Come here!’ Dudley calls.

‘I hope everything’s ok?’ Dudley says back on the phone.

Harry’s about to say ‘yes, everything’s fine of course’ but what comes out is ‘Lily hasn’t gotten out of bed in coming up four days, and I don’t know what to do.’ And he sounds pathetically desperate even to his own ears, but Dudley makes a sympathetic sound and it’s actually _really nice_ to talk to someone outside of this situation that he finds himself following up with ‘she’s had a bit of a rough time of it recently, and there’s some conversations that we need to have, but I don’t even know where to start, and I don’t want to make things worse.’

‘I’m sorry. If she ever wants to see Dacey she’s more than welcome to, or if you think it’s worth Dacey coming to yours? It’s not really my area but Kit should be able to help. Ah, here he is.’ Dudley passes the phone over.

‘Alright Harry?’ Kit says cheerily.

‘Hi Kit, sorry to disturb you.’

‘Not to worry, not to worry,’ he lowers his voice, ‘you’ve gotten me out of breakfast with my mother-in-law, so I should be thanking you really. What can I do?’

Harry runs through the situation. It sounds worse and worse the more he explains it. No wonder Lily-Lu has taken to her bed. He would too. He has to backtrack to explain about her divination talent, and then backtrack again, explaining briefly his and Ginny’s disappearance last year.

Kit disappears for a moment, and goes to find a pen and paper, and Harry can hear him humming along and scratching notes as Harry speaks.

‘Right' he says, when Harry comes to an end, ‘yeah, ok.’

Harry huff a laugh.

There’s a long pause, as Kit continues to write, and then he says again ‘yeah.’

Harry puts his head in his hands.

‘Right,’ Kit says slowly, ‘there are a couple of things that jump out to me straight away there. First, there’s going to be a definite element of guilt around her brother’s injury. Even though that’s out of her power, there’s always going to be something around being the one to walk away uninjured when someone you care about is hurt badly. Second, there’s more guilt around the breaking of the wards, when all she wanted to do was the exact opposite. I’m not surprised she’s struggling now you’ve returned home.’

Harry lowers his head, so he’s sprawled across the kitchen table. His jeans are uncomfortably damp.

Kit continues, ‘children have a tendency, especially children where they have a good relationships with their parents, to see ‘home’ as a place of safety and comfort, to think of home as a solution to problems. So Lily, subconsciously, will think ‘everything has gone wrong, and I feel awful and guilty. When I’m home, I always feel safe and supported, so the solution to my problem is that I want to go home’. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that, and my best guess, is that she _doesn’t_ feel any better by being home, and that in itself can be upsetting. And these are big things she’s dealing with, and home hasn’t provided the relief she was hoping for. So she, as anyone would, has taken to bed. I understand it.’

‘I just don’t want to make anything worse’ Harry says softly, and he sounds bereft to his own ears.

‘She knows what she wants to say to you. Children always do, she knows what she wants to say, and she knows what she wants you to say in return. The problem, is getting her one, to say what she needs to say to you, and two, figuring out what you need to say in return.’

‘How do I figure that out?’

‘That’s the million dollar question my friend.’

Harry sighs.

‘Do you want my advice? What I would do for my own daughter? Fair warning, this is going to sound arrogant as hell.’

‘Please.’

‘You or your wife, go and speak to her. Don’t expect her to respond, just talk, and tell her you love her. And then, see if you can persuade her or bribe her, to get up and join you on a family trip to Brighton beach.’

‘Ok. And how is Brighton beach specifically going to help me?’

‘It’s not. But we’ll meet you at the beach, and I’ll have a chat with her, and, here comes the arrogant bit, that should help. She knows what she wants to say, and sometimes it’s easier to say it to someone outside the situation. Dudley and I will take Petunia home and then we’ll drive to Brighton. We can be there by midday. And worst comes to worst she can spend the afternoon with Dacey, and honestly that might help too.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Thank you. I don’t know how I can thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me yet, I haven’t done anything. You can buy me a beer later, yeah?’

Ginny walks into the kitchen as Harry finishes up on the phone.

‘Have you had an accident my darling?’ She says, eyebrows raised at his wet trousers.

‘It’s coffee,’ he says, only a bit defensive.

‘Oh really?’ She says light and airy.

He flips her off, and doesn’t feel bad about it when she sniggers.

‘I might have a solution,’ he says softly, and he doesn’t need to expand. She knows what he’s on about.

They run through the conversation he’s just had with Kit, and Ginny nods and heads upstairs.

————

Lily-Lu is still lying in bed, in her self imposed exile, when Ginny comes and lies next to her.

‘Ok my sweet,’ she starts gently, ‘I think it’s time to get up now.’

Lily-Lu just burrows deeper under the duvet.

She doesn’t really know why she’s decided to hide in bed for so long, except everything seems difficult and upsetting and it’s just easier to hide here.

Ginny hums questioningly, and Lily-Lu mutters ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Why not?’

Lily-Lu doesn’t really have an answer to that. She just doesn’t.

‘Ok’ Ginny says, ‘Can I tell you something?’

Lily-Lu nods. Ginny wiggles close, presses her face close to Lily-Lu’s and says, ‘I love you. I love you lots.’

Lily-Lu doesn’t know whether to smile or cry.

‘Will you do something for me?’ and Lily-Lu knows that she will, whatever Ginny asks. ‘I really want to go to the beach today, will you come with me?’

Lily-Lu whispers ‘ok.’

She doesn’t see Ginny’s wide smile, but she feels the kiss Ginny gives her.

‘Come on then. Get up.’ Ginny giver her a little shove, and she does.

————

It takes them forty minutes to get ready. Lily-Lu has to shower, because she needs to wash her hair, and James can’t find his duckers.

Albus is in charge of rounding up toys - footballs, and rackets, tennis balls etc. - and eventually they’re ready.

Lily-Lu doesn’t like apparating anymore, but she follows obediently up the road to the apparition point, and Ginny pops James over, and then pops back to pick up Albus.

Instead of holding her wrist or hand, Harry loops his arms around her waist and holds her close in a hug as he apparates them to the beach.

————

She’s not sure whose idea this was, but, reluctantly, Lily-Lu admits it was a good one.

The fresh air is nice, after being stuck inside for so long, and they walk down and down until they come across a small bay that is almost deserted, and they set up camp. They lay out towels and set up the wind breaker, and when Dacey comes running down the beach Lily-Lu realises she’s been had. _Merlin_ her parents are sneaky.

But when Dacey wraps her arms around Lily-Lu tightly, it’s really nice to see her friend.

Dacey’s parents join them, and so does her little brother Elliott. They play football briefly, and James and Albus go for a swim. It’s nice.

She realises what’s going on when she and Ginny go for a walk further down the beach with Dacey’s dad Kit, and then suddenly Ginny has dropped back, trailing behind them, and then she’s left to speak to Kit directly.

Lily-Lu remembers that Dacey has said one of her dads was a child counsellor. She eyes Kit carefully and is willing to bet it’s him. 

He’s nice enough. He asks about her final term at school, about her family, her hobbies, and after a couple of minutes Lily-Lu takes a page out of James’ book and just plows into it.

‘I know what you’re doing you know.’

Kit raises his eyebrows, and tilts his head. ‘You do, do you?’

‘Yes. I know you’re a therapist. Did my parents ask you to speak to me?’

Kit tries not to smile, but he’s not entirely successful. ‘I’m not technically a therapist, and no, technically your parents didn’t ask me, I offered.’

‘But they think I need to talk to someone,’ and she feels a bit betrayed actually, but Kit shakes his head.

‘No, that’s not it at all. They don’t think you need to talk to someone. _I_ thought you might like to practice on me, whatever it is you want to say to them.’

‘I don’t want to say anything.’

‘Nothing at all? Nothing you’d like them to know?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah ok then.’

They walk in silence for a minute, Kit swinging the bucket and spade he’s brought with him, back and forth.

Lily-Lu glances over her shoulder, and Ginny is trailing behind them, out of earshot, but close enough to see.

‘I would tell them that it’s my fault,’ she says.

‘What was your fault?’

‘The attack on Jim.’

‘Did you attack him?’

‘No’ she gives a childish snigger, ‘not then anyway,’ and Kit laughs at that.

‘Then it’s not your fault.’

‘But it _is._ I should have seen the attack. What good is being able to see things in a stupid tea cup if I can’t see that?’

Kit stops, and abruptly sits down on the sand. He folds one leg underneath him, and stretches one out. He gestures to her, and she wearily crouches down in front of him.

‘You’ve just said one of my most hated phrases in the whole world. Do you know what it is?’

‘Tea cup.’

‘No. You said ‘I should have.’ Let me ask you a question. What good does ‘I should have’ do?’

‘Thats - that’s how you learn, isn’t it. I should have done this.’

‘No. I should have is nothing. It means nothing. Let me show you.’

And he takes the bucket and spade, and loosely packs sand into the bucket. But he doesn’t fill it all the way, and he doesn’t pack the sand very tightly, and when he tips the bucket over he doesn’t hit the top. When he lifts the bucket up, the sand tumbles out, and leaves the saddest looking sand castle she’s ever seen.

‘I should have used more sand.’ Kit says, ‘and I should have packed it more tightly, and I should have hit the top. Do you agree?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what?’ She watches him carefully, head tilted. Where is he going with this? ‘I could sit here, and agonise over what I should have done. But it’s not going to do anything. It doesn’t change anything. What I need to say, is ‘next time I’m going to’.’

Lily-Lu frowns. This sounds like some self-help nonsense that Dominique likes.

‘Next time I’m going to use more sand,’ and he fills the bucket with sand properly. ‘Next time I’m going to fill it properly’ and he squeezes in as much sand as possible, and ‘next time I’m going to hit the top,’ and when he flips the bucket over, and hits the top. When he lifts the bucket, it’s a perfect sand castle.

‘There’s no point in me fixating on what I should have done, because that doesn’t help anyone. Identify what went wrong, what you did wrong, and then do what you can to fix it. And move on. Next time, learn the lessons and don’t make the same mistake again.’

‘I broke all the wards at our house, and put everyone in danger,’ she says slowly.

‘Ok. So what have you learnt?’

‘I learnt - um - not to sneak out when I’ve been told not to. And that the wards can be stretched.’

‘Good. So next time I’m going to-‘ he prompts.

‘Next time I’m going to - um - listen? To my parents?’

‘Ok.’

She thinks of Harry shouting at Malfoy in the dining room of Grimmauld Place. _I need my kids to trust me_ he’d said.

‘Next time I’m going to trust that my parents are doing the best to - to keep me safe, and listen to them.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s my fault that Jim got hurt. Because I didn’t see the attack.’

‘Ok that’s a tricky one, because it’s definitely not your responsibility to prevent attacks like that,’ Kit says quickly, ‘your dad was quite clear about that.’

‘That’s what Jim said too.’

‘Good. So what could our next time being for that one?’

‘Next time - next time - I am going to practice fortune telling, so that next time if something happens I might be able to see it.’

‘Ok,’ Kit says slowly, ‘we could tag on something else to that one, something you said just now about trust. How about, ‘I’m going to practice fortune telling, so that next time if something happens I might be able to see it, but I’m going to trust my dad to protect me and my family.’

Lily-Lu thinks about that for a moment, drawing her fingers in the sand.

‘But, everyone acted like it was no big deal. I put everyone in danger, and I got two weeks of chores and two weeks with no broomstick. It doesn’t feel fair somehow.’

Understanding crosses Kit’s face, and he strokes his beard.

‘Ah, so the problem is, you don’t feel like you have paid the price for the mistake you made? That everyone has forgiven you, but you didn’t earn it.’

‘But I don’t know if everyone _has_ forgiven me. They didn’t say anything about it.’

Kit nods.

‘So tell them that. Ask them to forgive you. I guarantee that they already have, but if you need to hear it then tell them.’

‘You think they already have?’

‘Your dad called my house, and spent an hour on the phone to me to ask advice on how to help you because you’d been in bed for three days,’ he says bluntly. ‘Because he loves you and he was worried about you. Your parents have forgiven you. Trust me.’

Lily-Lu takes a deep breath, and looks away. Ginny is paddling to her left, and she’s waving at Harry who’s swimming in the sea. He’s quite far out, rising and falling with waves.

‘I think I’m going to go swimming,’ She says, and Kit nods and says ok. He heaves himself back up and heads back towards their little group by the rocks.

They draw level with Ginny, and Lily-Lu strips off her shorts and hands them to her mother, and then wades out into the sea.

It’s cold, even in the hight of summer, and she wades in and in until she’s up to her chest. Harry sees her coming, and starts swimming towards her, and she’s out of her depth a bit now, so she paddles forward, and Harry reaches out his hands and grabs her upper arms.

He’s standing, and it’s easy for him to draw her close and take her weight in the water.

‘Hi’ he says, and he’s squinting slightly without his glasses on.

‘Hi’ she says back.

And she doesn’t know what to say - she’s never been so unsure as she has been this whole summer - so she wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him.

‘Did you have a nice chat with Kit?’ he asks and when she pulls back and narrows her eyes at him, he laughs and sighs ‘guilty’ he pleads, ‘but I just want you to be ok.’

It takes an enormous amount of courage to say the next few words, but somehow she manages it, ‘We just didn’t talk about it. I didn’t know if it was ok now, you know? If everyone had forgiven me. Because I really messed up.’

‘Of course we’ve forgiven you.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Of course. I’ve already forgiven you. Mummy has too. Ok?’

It’s like a weight has been lifted, to hear him say it so clearly and so unambiguously.

‘Just like that?’ She checks, just in case.

‘Just like that,’ Harry confirms, then they have to jump then and float with a big wave that lifts Harry off his feet, and when he’s back on the sand, he says seriously, ‘and it wasn’t down to you entirely. Mummy and I weren’t totally honest with you. We assumed that you would know - about the threat, about the wards - and we didn’t tell you directly. We also didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily, but it’s easy to make mistakes when you don’t know the whole picture. I’ve done it enough times in my life. Baby, I’m sorry. We’ll communicate better next time. And we’ll find you a proper teacher, ok?’

It’s not unusual for Harry to apologise to them. He’s generally a fair dad, and he takes responsibility for his mistakes. This is, however, the first time he’s apologised to her so sincerely - usually it’s ‘I’m sorry I washed your white top with a red one and now it’s turned pink, I’ll buy you a new one.’

He has made a mistake. And _he should have told her._ But, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Kit says that should have doesn’t mean anything. And it’s easy for her to agree, and smile and say ‘Ok’.

He smiles back.

‘I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing’ Harry says eventually, once his lips have turned white and Lily-Lu’s fingers have gone all wrinkly, ‘shall we go back?’

And they slowly wade back to shore.

They go and get a disposable BBQ, and Dudley cooks sausages and burgers, and they eat them with their fingers, and get ketchup everywhere. Lily-Lu realises that her parents have been talking, when Ginny comes and sits behind her and pulls Lily-Lu back on to her lap. She wraps her arm around Lily-Lu and holds her close and whispers ‘I’ve forgiven you too, I’m sorry that you didn’t know. I’ll always forgive you everything.’

They play an adapted version of rounders, and Ginny gets really competitive when Albus nearly beats her, to James and Lily-Lu’s glee, but she pulls it back at the last minute. Dacey has a really good backhand, and when Harry says she’d make a decent beater she glows with pride.

Which leads them, once they’ve all flopped down tired and out of breath, to:

‘What’s quidditch?’ Dudley asks, ‘you used to play at school, right? I remember you had a broom?’

This leads to an in depth discussion of the quidditch rules and strategies, and Lily-Lu sees her parents share one of those unknowable looks, and then Harry says ‘come with us to the world cup if you want?’

And Dacey has already accepted before Dudley or Kit can say anything.

‘Are you sure?’ Dudley says, ‘You don’t have to, we can pay for the tickets.’

‘Nah mate,’ Ginny says from where she’s laying in the sand, ‘I get loads of free tickets, don’t worry about it. Four for the Dursleys. I’ll put you on the list. No problem.’

Lily-Lu sits on the sand with Dacey, and they whisper and catch up, and she catches James’ eye and he winks at her.

————

Kit tells Harry later, with a smile, that Lily-Lu is a charming little girl. That she had him rumbled from the second Ginny took a step back.

Harry interprets ‘charming’ to mean ‘cheeky.’

————

After that, Harry tells his department (politely) to stick it and takes the rest of August off. He leaves all his cases in work, doesn’t even think of it, and dedicates his time to his family.

Ginny does the same, as much as she is able with training for the cup ongoing, but they spend every evening together.

During the days Harry lets the kids (kids! James is seventeen now, and Albus is nearly as tall as Harry, but they both seem happy to follow his lead in this) choose what they do. They go swimming, Lily-Lu doesn’t want to go cycling (and that makes Harry worry, but she seems ok so he leaves it) but they go walking in the countryside.

They have to go to Diagon Alley to get James a new wand, because he’s been complaining for weeks about how he doesn’t have one. When he blows up a shelf of wands and drenches himself in water Lily-Lu looks on the barely concealed glee.

They go to the cinema, and to London for a show, and Harry does everything in his power to show his children that they’re ok and that their family is reliable. Secure.

It’s worth it, when two weeks in he comes back from nipping to the shop to find that they’ve launched full blown war in the garden. They’ve got tea towels, and wrapped them around and around, and apparently you can swing a tea towel like a whip and it makes an almighty crack. Harry didn’t know that. When he mentions it to Ginny later she says that Bill once nearly took out Charlie’s eye with a tea towel. _Siblings._

James isn’t as quick as he’s used to being, so his younger siblings are ruthlessly taking advantage of him. They’re dancing circles around him, taking cracks at his legs, back and shoulders. Strategically avoiding his front left.

James is trying his best, but Albus is quick and Lily-Lu is scrappy, and he’s almost entirely at their mercy.

Harry feels vaguely like he should intervene.

He doesn’t, and when Albus trips over a stray football, and topples straight into the pond, the resulting cackles make even Harry smile.

Harry goes to pull Albus out of the pond, who shakes his head like a dog to dislodge the water from his long hair, James is doubled over laughing, and Lily-Lu’s giggles are light and melodic, Harry thinks that it was worth it.

Later, once Ginny has come back from training and they’ve eaten, they sit in the garden and Lily-Lu is sprawled against Ginny - for the first time in a long time, it feels like - and Ginny strokes her hair.

The boys shove and push each other half heartedly, teasing, and Harry stretches out on the grass.

It’s ok.

————

The quidditch world cup sneaks up on them, a bit.

They were probably going to go anyway. The ministry gets free tickets and Harry had already managed to smuggle away five, but it’s a completely different experience with Ginny playing.

The kids are beside themselves. Harry’s seen them through Christmases and birthdays and he’s never, in his life, seen them so hyped up with excitement as they are the evening before the game.

It feels like they’ve regressed to being small children, back when it was an absolute nightmare to try and manage all three of them at once. Back when, if you took your eyes off one of them for a second, they would eat something, or draw on something, or fall over and then you’d have to deal with them and take your eyes off another one. Like some crazy kind of wack-a-mole.

He remembers, with a small smile, taking them to Ginny’s quidditch games when she was still playing for the Harpies. He’d strap Lily-Lu to his chest, and cling on to James and Albus and refuse to let of of their wrists for the whole game in case they’d fall off the stands or run away or something even more insane (both of which actually happened, Harry always learns from his mistakes). When they were a bit older he’d bribe them to sit still, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

Eventually they drift off to bed, and by half eleven the house is quiet, and Ginny is doing jumping jacks in the kitchen to try and get rid of some of her excess energy so she can sleep.

Harry stands in the doorway and watches her fondly.

————

It’s a different story the next morning. Much like the world cup final he went to when he was young, they have an early start, and his kids refuse to get out of bed.

Ginny has already gone, giving them sleepy kisses, (and if Harry and Ginny snogged in the kitchen before she left, the kids never need to know. And if Ginny is fifteen minutes late to the team breakfast, she just shrugs and tells Gwenog that it’s not her fault her husband is so sexy. Gwenog tells Harry this later, to his great embarrassment).

It’s left to Harry to manage his kids, and Teddy who should be arriving at no later than quarter past seven, meet up with the Dursleys, and get them all to the campsite. Where, undoubtedly, the rest of the Weasley mob will be waiting.

Harry has overseen too many auror missions to count, but, honestly, this is harder.

When he invited Dudley and Kit, he hadn’t accounted for the fact that they will likely be introduced to Harry’s entire extended family _all at once._

Thank god for Hermione.

Harry thinks he sees a grey hair by his temple when he brushes his teeth. He’s not surprised.

Teddy arrives at seven fifteen exactly - Harry suspects he stood outside and timed it - hair Harpies green and ‘Team GB’ colours already painted on his face. He’s hyper and excited, and ruthlessly wakes up Harry’s lot. He nearly scalps himself on the ceiling light when he jumps on Albus’ bed to wake him up, trips over Albus’ legs and smacks his head.

They put ice on it and he’s fine. Harry tells him sternly that they don’t have time to go to St Mungo’s, so _he’d better be fine._ He’s only half joking.

But, at twenty five past seven everyone is awake, so Harry can’t dispute Teddy’s methods, unorthodox as they may be.

Half an hour later they’re washed, dressed, packed and Harry sits them all on the sofa for the obligatory pep-talk.

Once upon a time all four of them could fit on the two person sofa easily, legs swinging off the ground. Now at twelve, fifteen, seventeen and twenty-three it’s a bit of a squeeze. And by squeeze, he means they _don’t fit._ At all. They’re all four squished together, with Lily-Lu half sat on Teddy and James lounging with his legs out stretched and Albus wedged in the corner. It’s comical. It’s also very sweet.

‘Right,’ he says bracingly, he stands before them and claps his hands. ‘Usual rules, stay together, there’s going to be big crowds, be sensible, don’t do anything stupid, look out for one another. Switch on. Good?’

They nod. These are well known to them by now. ‘Ok. Let’s-‘

‘One sec,’ James interrupts, raising his hand slightly. He heaves himself up, narrowly missing elbowing Albus in the groin and that leads to several minutes of shoving and laughing before they settle. Then it turns out that he wants Harry to sit on the sofa too, and that leads to another round of sniggering, so Harry obligingly perches on the arm and watches James stand in front of them.

‘Right,’ he says and claps his hands in a clear mockery of Harry and Teddy howls. ‘Pep talk’ he says.

Harry draws on his auror face, crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows.

James drops his mockery now, still laughing, and says specifically to Harry, ‘just relax yeah?’

To which Harry tilts his head. ‘Sorry?’

‘I know it’s stressful,’ he carries on and there’s a mutter from Albus at Harry’s elbow that sounds suspiciously like ‘you’re stressful’, and James turns and snaps ‘shut up Al.’

‘I know it’s stressful at the moment, and you’re worried about Dudley and them lot, but, you know. Don’t be, because we’re here too. And we can run interference for you.’ He gives Harry a thumbs up.

Harry’s gobsmacked. James obviously mistakes silence for lack of understanding, and keeps talking. ‘Because I know that things are difficult with them, and he wasn’t always nice to you, but we’re here, you, and me and Ted, we can, we could take him.’

James and Teddy could 100%definitely _not_ take Dudley in any sort of fight, but Harry’s not going to say that.

Albus and Lily-Lu are laughing but Harry feels oddly touched.

‘I will bear that in mind. Thanks Jim.’

And James nods, pleased, and they shuffle around to grab bags and get going because, despite Harry’s best efforts, they’re running late.

————

Harry loops an arm around James’ front as they leave the house and pulls him close.

‘Thanks buddy,’ he mutters.

James pats Harry’s arm where it’s resting on his chest.

‘Seriously though, I think we could take him,’ James says.

‘Mum could take him.’

‘Mum could could _definitely_ take him.’

————

It’s not as bad as Harry thinks it might be.

Dudley and Kit are obviously making an effort. Dudley in particular is trying really hard to be nice and to be suitably awed by everything, from the tent that’s bigger on the inside, to the fire works to the stands selling merch. He’s also trying really hard to remember everyone’s name, and even though Hermione had told Harry that she wanted nothing to do with his cousin, it only takes twenty minutes before she breaks and takes it upon herself to be Dudley and Kit’s guide.

When he catches her eye she purses her lips in a way that, shockingly, reminds him of aunt Petunia that he nearly spits his beer back into the can.

He makes an excuse to talk to her once they’re settled, and they drift away from the tent where he can wish her congratulations properly. He can’t believe he hasn’t see her for so long.

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes, ‘I can’t believe he told you. I wanted us to tell you together.’

‘I already knew. Three eh? It’s a good number.’

Hermione sighs, ‘Three. I already know it’s too many.’

And Harry can’t exactly disagree with that.

‘It’s a good number,’ he repeats. ‘Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’

‘Not yet. Ron thinks it’s a girl. I think he’s making things up.’

Harry gives her a big hug, and she squeezes him tight.

‘Congratulations.’ He says again. ‘Do your kids know?’

Hermione lets out a huff. ‘Yeah, Hugo was thrilled. Rose was horrified.’

Harry can only laugh.

————

Britain wins the World Cup.

Ginny plays excellently, in what is probably the last quidditch match of her career, and Harry looses his voice from shouting so loud.

The celebrations are loud and energetic and last long into the night.

He slumps into his bed in the tent at half past two in the morning, and feels _happy._

————

The morning after the World Cup win, the campsite is quiet and sleepy, and everything is fresh and bright.

Lily-Lu sneaks out of the tent early, and sits just outside it in her pyjamas, and watches the sun come up.

Teddy comes to join her.

He sits close and puts his arm around her.

‘Ok Lulu?’ He says to the top of her head.

‘Yeah. It’s been a weird-ass summer,’ she says, and Teddy nods.

‘But are you ok now?’

Lily-Lu thinks hard. This time last year her parents were missing and she thought that she’d never see them again. This time six weeks ago her brother was in hospital and her family was stressed and scattered. 

Now, everyone is together, sleepy and close and happy.

There’s something in that, she thinks as she plays with the dew wet grass. Yes, it’s been a horrible summer, but we’re ok. We’ll always be ok.

No matter what.

‘I’m good,’ she says, and leans her head against Teddy’s shoulder.

And she means it.

END.

————


End file.
